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TZLn 


Book . 4-i I ?r]~ 




Department of the 
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By OEDEE OP THE Seceetaey : 

JOSEPHUS DANIELS, 

0-2 Chief CUrk. 


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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


TEN TIMES ONE SERIES. 

FOUR AND FIVE. 

A STORY OF A LEND-A-HAND CLUB. 

By EDWARD E. HALE, 

AUTHOR OF “ten TIMES ONE IS TEN,” “ IN HIS NAME,” “ MRS. MERRIAM’s 
SCHOLARS,” “how TO DO IT,” ETC. 

16mo. Cloth.. Price, $1.00. 


Dr. Hale’s style is so well-known that it seems unnecessary to say more of 
one of his books than to announce its issue. The friends of the “Ten Times 
One is Ten ” series will find this latest volume equally delightful with the others. 
Four boys of the “ Lend-a-Hand ” club camp one summer in the Kaatskills, 
and, in addition to trout-fishing and hunting, find time to practically illustrate 
their club name in various neighborly acts of kindness for the mountaineers. 
The first summer one new member is added, and each one enrolls a new member 
for the following summer. Thus doubling its membership, the work of the club 
in camp reunion each summer, and in various schools and towns in winter, is 
traced for four years, making a very bright and interesting story. — Public 
Opinion. 

Stories about woodland camps are always of interest to boys, and Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale knows how to write and touch the innermost chord of sympathy in 
young hearts. The Wadsworth mottoes and their work form the theme of Dr. 
Hale’s latest story, “ Four and Five.” The delightful camp, the ice-boat race, 
the stories of the incidents in various parts of the world, the formation of the 
club all go to make up a very readable story. Every boy will be benefited by it. 
— Boston Times. 

A new volume has been published in Edward Everett Hale’s popular “Ten 
Times One ” series which is entitled “ Four and Five. A story of a Lend-a-Hand 
Club.” The story is imbued with all that strong, fresh, original, and helpful style 
for which the distinguished author is so famous, and which has made him so 
immense a favorite with young people, as well as with all older readers. Several 
interesting incidents occur during their camping times in which they splendidly 
carry out their lend-a-hand principle, and carry substantial aid and joy to the 
unfortunate. The story throughout is instinct with the brightest spirit, while the 
mottoes of the club are illustrated in a way to make it eminently helpful to 
every boy and girl in the land. — Boston Home Journal. 


Sold everywhere. Mailed.^ post-paid., on receipt of 
price by the Publishers, 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


EDWARD E. HALE’S WRITINGS 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY: Ten Christ- 
mas Stories. With Frontispiece by Darley. i6mo. $ 1 . 2 ^. 
UPS AND DOWNS. An Every-day Novel. i6mo. ^^1.50 
A SUMMER VACATION. Paper covers. 50 cents. 

IN HIS NAME. Square i8mo. ^i.oo. 

OUR NEW CRUSADE. Square i8mo. $ 1.00 
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, and other Tales. 
i6mo. $1.25. 

THE INGHAM PAPERS. i6mo. $1.25. 

WORKINGMEN’S HOMES. Illustrated. i6mo. $1.00. 
HOW TO DO IT. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

HIS LEVEL BEST. i6mo. $1.25. 

THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusade. A 
Temperance Story. Square i8mo. Paper covers. 50 cents. 

GONE TO TEXAS ; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pull- 
man. i6mo. $1.00. 

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, and other Stories. i6mo. $1.00. 

WHAT CAREER? or, The Choice of a Vocation and the Use 
of Time. i6mo. $1.25. 

MRS. MERRIAM’S SCHOLARS. A Story of the “ Original 
Ten.” i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

SEVEN SPANISH CITIES, and the Way to Them. i6mo. 
$1.25. 

MR. TANGIER’S VACATIONS. i6mo. $1.25. 

— ♦— 

For sale by all Fookscllers, Mailed^ postpaid^ by iht 
Publishers^ 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


TEN TIMES ONE 
IS TEN: 


THE POSSIBLE REFORMATION. 

3fn Ctoo Parte* 

^ td..' ‘ 

BY 

COL. FREDERIC INGHAM. 

^ihmrgy 

department 

of the 

BOSTON; 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1893. 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 


Copyright, 1883, 

By Roberts Brothers. 


Wt 

JUN 6 


University Press; 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 


P E E F A C E. 


little book would never have been w^^ 
ten, I suppose, but for the persuasion of 
my kind friend, the late Dr. Wayland, the Presi- 
dent of Brown University. It is nearly fifteen 
years ago that I told him the plan of this story, 
if it may be called a story, expressing the wish 
that some of the masters would undertake to 
illustrate the lessons involved in it. Every one 
who knew him — and how many there are who 
knew him enough to love him ! — will remember 
how practical and how personal was every notion 
of the religious life, of Christian labor, and of 
missionary triumph, in his mind. What he 
thought the practical and personal character of 
my little sketch pleased him ; and he was kind 
enough to urge me once and again to enlarge it, 
and to print it. I think it is because he wished 
it, that I have tried to do so. 


VI 


PREFACE. 


There are hundreds of people who know that 
the character of Harry Wadsworth and his 
unselfish influence are studied from the life 

T dedicate the book to those who knew him 
and loved him. 


EDWARD E. HALE. 


South Gohobboatiohai. Ghuboh, 
BoflTOMT, S«pt. 17, 1870. 


^ibrarg, 
department 
of the interior- 


CONTENTS 


iFirst ^art. 

THE STORY. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. What Began it 9 

II. Three Years after 28 

III. Ten Times a Hundred 46 

IV. Ten Times a Thousand 78 

V. Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Isles of 

the Ocean 90 

VI. Ten Times a Hundred Thousand ... 97 
VH. The Conferenz at Christmas Island . 109 

VIII. Ten Times Ten Million 118 

IX. A Thousand Million 130 

^Econtj Part. 

HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 

Neither Scrip nor Money 157 

Stand and Wait 203 

Harry Wadsworth Helpers 252 

Look-Up Legion 255 

Welcome and Correspondence Clubs . . . 257 

Pioneer Legion Work 259 

A Girls’ Legion 260 






TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


CHAPTER L 

WHAT BEGAN IT. 

[A talk in Calabria^ after dress parade.\ 

T SUPPOSE it was the strangest Club that 
ever came into being. 

There were these ten members I tell you ol. 
And they have never met but this once, nor do 
I believe they will ever meet again. 

They met in the railroad station at North 
Colchester, waiting for the express train. The 
express train, if you happen to remember that 
particular afternoon and evening, was five hours 
and twenty minutes behind time. They knew 
it was behind time, but they had nowhere else 
to go, and it was then and there that the Cluh 
was formed. 

For they had all come together at Hariy 
Wadsworth’s funeral. The most manly anci 
most womanly fellow he, whom I ever knew 


10 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


the merriest and the freshest, and the braves^, 
and the wisest; the most sympathizing when 
people were sorry, and the most sympathizing 
when they were glad. Thunder ! If I were at 
home, and could just show you three or four of 
Harry’s yellow letters that lie there, then you 
wou d know something about him. Simply, he 
was the most spirited man who ever stumbled 
over me ; he was possessed, and possessed with 
a true spirit, — that was what he was; and so 
he had guns enough, and more than guns enough, 
for any emergency. 

And Harry Wadsworth had died. And from 
north, and east, and south, we ten there had 
come to the funeral. And we were waiting for 
the train, as I said ; and that is the way the Club 
was born. Then and there it had its first meet- 
ing, and, as I say, its last, most likely. 

Bridget Corcoran may strictly be called the 
founder of the Club, unless dear Harry himself 
was. For Bridget Corcoran was the first person 
that said any thing. I never can sit still very 
long at a time at such places. And I had sat in 
my chair by that overfilled stove, in that stifling 
room, as long as I could stand it, and a good 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


11 


deal longer, none of us saying any thing. Then 
1 had gone out and walked the platform, brood- 
ing, till it seemed to me that any thing was bet- 
ter than walking the platform. Then I went in 
again to find the air just as dead and stived and 
insupportable as it was before. And this time 
I left the door open and walked across to the 
back window, which looked on a different wood- 
pile from the wood-pile the front window looked 
upon. I need not say that the only variety in 
our prospects was in our choice of wood-piles ; 
but we could look at the ends of sticks, or at the 
sides of them, as we preferred. 

I walked to the back window, and began look- 
ing at the back wood-pile. 

“You knew Mr. Wadsworth?” said Bridget 
(yorcoran, timidly. And it was a comfort to 
me. 

“ Knew him ! ” said I ; “ I did not know any- 
body else ! ” 

“ I like to tell you about him then,” said she, 
with her pleasant Irish accent. “ I like to teL 
every one about him. For, save for him, I do 
not know where I should be this day ; and ] 
do know where my boy Will would be.” 


12 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN 


“ How is that I asked, roused ap a little by 
her sympathy. 

Will, sir, would be in the State’s Prison save 
for him you carried to the grave this day ; ana 
for me, I think I should have died of a broken 
heart. You know, your reverence, that in the 
charge of the freight station, when he was first 
appointed here, it was for him to say who should 
have the chips, and who should not have them. 
And he was so good — as he always was — as 
to give me the second right in the wood-yard ; 
Mary Morris always having the first, because 
her husband, who is now switch-tender, lost his 
arm in the great smash-up come Michaelmas 
five years gone by. He gave me the second 
right, I say; and though I say it who should 
not, I never abused my privilege, and he knew 1 
never did, your reverence, as how could I, when 
he was always so kind, and often called me into 
his office, and always spoke to me as kindly as 
if I was a born lady, as indeed he was a born 
gentleman.” 

Ah me ! if I only could go on and tell 
Bridget’s story as she told it herself, with the 
thousand pretty praises of dear Harry, you 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


13 


\Krould better understand what manner of man 
he was, and how the Club was born. But there 
is no time for that, and this was the story shortly • 
Harry saw one day that her eyes were red, as 
she passed him, and he would not rest till he had 
called her into the office and found why ; and 
the why was, that her boy Will had “ hooked 
jack,’’ as the youngster said, — had played tru- 
ant, and had done it now for many weeks in 
order, and had done it with the Tidd boys, and 
the Donegans (sons of perdition as they always 
seemed), and nothing Bridget could say or do 
would put Will in any better way. Then was 
it that Harry sent for the little rascal, “ talked to 
him,” she said ; but I knew Harry well enough 
to know what the talking was. He took the 
boy up country with him one day, when he was 
making a contract for some wood. lie stopped 
as they came back, at a trout stream, and bade 
the little scamp try some of the best hooks from 
his book. He sent him home, after such a 
glimpse of a decent boy’s pleasures, as nobody 
ever had shown poor Will before. He sent for 
him the next day, and told him he wanted him 
in the office. He dressed the child in new clothes 


14 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


from head to foot. He made him respect him* 
self, in forty ways you or I would never have 
thought of. Before three weeks were gone, Will 
was as lamed of his bad handwriting. Before 
four weeks were gone, he was ashamed of his 
old company; in a fortnight more, he was the 
steadiest scholar in the “Commercial College” 
of the place. Before three months were over, 
he came to Harry with some lame duck of a 
Tidd boy whom he had lured out of some quag- ^ 
mire or other. And the upshot of it was, that 
at this moment Will was as decent a boy as 
there was in the county ; while, but for Harry, 
he had as fair chance as any of them to be 
hanged. 

That, severely condensed, was Bridget Cor- 
coran’s story. 

Now, I have no idea of telling how Harry had 
come to be the star of my worship, — worship 
which was not idolatry. Talking here at the 
head of the regiment, how do I know who 
might overhear me, and this is no story to get 
into the newspapers. But, while I was reflect- 
ing that Harry had rescued poor Will from 
one set of devils, and me from devils of quite 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


15 


anotnei color, Caroline Leslie looked up. She 
had joined Bridget and me by the window. 

“ Do you mean the Caroline Leslie that gives 
the bird the lump of sugar in Chalon^s picture ? 

“ Why, yes ! that same Caroline Leslie. Did 
you know her ? ’’ She looked up. She thankee 
Bridget very cordially. “ 1 thank you ever sc 
much for telling me that. It has comforted me 
more than any thing to-day. Will you not 
come and see me sometime in Worcester ? You 
will find me in 907, Summer Street Let me 
write it down for you.” So Bridget was 
pleased. And then Caroline got up and asked 
me to walk, and took my arm, and we walked 
the platform together; and she told me what 
Harry had been to her. How, only three years 
before, when he first came to Colchester, or to 
that village, how her brother Edward brought 
him home, and made her mother say he might 
board there. How her mother said it was im- 
possible, but consented the moment she saw 
Harry, when he only came in to tea. H( v she, 
Caroline, was a goose and a fool, and a dolt 
and good-for-nothing, when he moved into that 
nouse. And how the mere presence of that 


16 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


man in that family — or was it his booKS, or 
was it the people that came to see him ? — had 
changed the whole direction of her life, as aii 
arrow’s direction is changed when it glances on 
the side of a temple. Now, Caroline Leslifc 
was no more in love with Harry than you are 
Pretty girl, she had her own lover, and I 'mew 
she had. And he, far away across the sea, 
would shed tears as bitter as hers of that day, 
when he knew he was never to see Harry’s face 
again. 

But we were only three of the Club — Caro- 
line, Bridget, and I. Count Will Corcoran for 
four if you like. If you count him, the Club is 
eleven. 

But what I tell you will give you an idea. 
For as soon as we got talking, the bakers and 
the baked by the stove got talking; all telling 
much the same kind of story, how dear Harry 
had been a new life to them. Widdifield, who 
you would have said had no sentiment, quie+ 
Mrs. Emerson, Mary Merriam, and her brother 
John, and even Will Morton. I must not try to 
tell the storit s, though I could, every one. We 
gll drew toge’ ^er at last, when something Mor 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


17 


ton said drew out George Dutton to “ state his 
experience.” 

“Wadsworth and I,” said he, “went out in 
one of those first California colonies, — when 
the mutual system was tried in all sorts of ways, 
and people thought the kingdom of heaven was 
coming because they all put two hundred dollars 
apiece into a joint-stock company. On the voy- 
age I did not see him much, and I know I did 
not like him. How strange that seems now! 
For there was no reason under heaven whv I 
should not have found him out at the very first 
moment ; and now it seems as if I lost so much 
in losing all the chance of those five months. 
Well, I lost it — for better or worse. We came 
to California, and the colony all broke up into 
forty thousand pieces. Little enough sticking 
by each other there! Each man for himself; 
and, as always happens on that theory, the devil 
for us all, with a vengeance ! 

“ I roughed through every thing. Got a uttle 
dust now and then, and spent it a great deal 
faster than I got it. I have paid one hundred 
and eighty-six dollars in gold for a pair of miner’s 
boots, — and they were good boots. — when 1 


i8 TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

had not a rag beside to put upon my feet At 
last I thought my lucky time had come. We 
were up in what they then called the Cotton- 
wood Reach, and a very good company of ua 
had struck some very decent diggings, and had 
laid off our claims with something like precisioji, 
and order, and decency. Wadsworth, as I hap- 
pened to know, was with some men who had 
got hold of a water-privilege three or four miles 
above us. Some of our men had been up to see 
about buying some water from him, and said he 
was quite a king in that country. But I had 
not seen him. 

“ Then there came in on us, just as we got 
well established, a lot of roughs, blacklegs and 
rowdies, of every nation and color under heaven. 
They wanted our claims ; we all knew that well 
enough. And they hung round, as such d 5vils 
as they will, trying all sorts of ways to gi;t a 
corner of the wedge in. We were a pretty 
decent set; and none of our boys really liked 
them, but we were as civil as we could be. 
Some of the fellows were fools enough to lose 
dust to them, and [ never heard that any of them 
won any. They pretended to stake off some 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


19 


claims of their own, but they never worked any 
of any account. They drank their whiskey, 
and put up tents and shanties for gambling; 
and swaggered round among the rest of us, and 
said they knew better ways for washing than we 
did ; and so on. All the time we all knew that 
something was brewing, while they were about. 
And sure enough, at last it came. 

“ Watrous and Flanegan, who were a sort ol 
selectmen to us, had to go down to Agnes City 
with some gold,^ and to buy some pork. And 
they took with them two or three of the best 
fellows we had. Watrous came to me the last 
thing, and said, ‘ Don’t you get into a quarrel 
with these greasers,’ for he knew I hated them, 
But, Mr. Ingham, a saint in heaven would have 
quarrelled with those men. It all began about 
a shovel. One of these blackguards came up to 
me to borrow a shovel, and I let him have it. 
Then he came back for another, and I let him 
have that. Then came up three of them and 
wanted three shovels ; and, to make a long story 
short, we came to words — they and I. They 
had come up for a fight ; and they got it. At 
ast, one of the most noisy of them, — to give 


20 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


him his due, he was half drunk, — drew his 
revolver and snapped it at me. Lucky for me 
it missed fire, and in very short metre I hit him 
over the head with the crow-bar I was using. 
O, what a howl they made! They dashed at 
me, and I ran. The first of them tripped and 
fell ; which stopped the others a half second. 
And then the whole tribe of them, who had been 
watching the affair, came running after me, 
yelling and howling like so many wolves.” 

By this time, as I said, Dutton had the whole 
group in the station round him. 

“Did you ever run for your life?” said he, 
with a funny twinkle of the eye. “ I tell you, 
— that to put in*the best stride you know, and 
to clear every log, and take no help at any ditch, 
but just to run, run, run, run, — half a mile, — 
three quarters, — and a mile, — to feel your 
heart up in your throat, your lungs pumping, 
and pumping nothing, — while you just run, 
run, run, — and know that one false step is 
death ; — I tell you that is what a man remem- 
bers. That was the way I ran. I dared not 
look back . knew 1 was well ahead of all but 
one man. But t could hear his steady step 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


21 


gtep, step, step, — just in the time of mine. 
Was he taller than I, or shorter ? I dared not 
look round and see. But 1 knew his stride 
depended on that. He was gaining nothing oi» 
me in time ; was he gaining in length of pace ? 

“ Where was I running to ? Why, to our 
poor little shanty, where I had left George 
Orcutt lame in bed. What safety would that 
be ? These devils could tear it down in thirty 
seconds. I did not know, but I ran ! 

“ I ran — with the one man close behind, and 
the others yelling farther back. He did not yell. 
He saved his breath for running. But he did 
not catch me. I flung the door open. I crowd- 
ed down the latch. I stuck a domino from the 
table in between the latch and the latch-guard, 
and with this as my poor fortress, I flung myself 
on the floor. The man dashed up after me, but 
did not so much as try the door ! 

‘‘ An instant showed why ; for in ten seconds 
the wolves, as they seemed, were howling round 
him. Then the man, whoever he was, said, 
‘ The first man that steps on this plank is a dead 
man ! There’s been enough of this bullying ' 
Dirty Dick, take care you are not seen again in 


22 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


this county. I give you six hours to be gone 
Chip and Leathers, you had best go with him, 
or without him. Your room is better than your 
company. I will have the sheriff here by night, 
and we will see what sort of men are going to 
jump claims on this creek. You fellow with the 
red beard, who ran away from Angeles, there’s 
a warrant out against you. Understand all of 
you, that this game is played about through.’ 

“ Who was this celestial visitant? Orcutt 
and I listened in amazement. Was this the 
way Raphael addressed the rebellious spirits 
when Milton was not at hand ? Any way, they 
answered much as the rebellious spirits would 
have done. Some swore, some laughed, other 
some, on the outside, turned round and vamosed. 
So Orcutt told me, whose eye was at a knot- 
hole. The celestial visitant said not a word 
more. But in five minutes the whole crew of 
them was gone. 

“ Then I unlatched the door. Raphael came 
in, and was — Harry Wadsworth! Yes: that 
light, frail fellow, whom we carried so easily 
today, was the man who looked those beggars in 
the eye that day, and saved my life for me ! 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


23 


That was the beginning with me, and there 
are few things he and I have not done together 
since that. We have slept under the same 
blanket, and starved on the same trail. And 
if any man ever taught me any thing, that dear 
fellow taught me all of life I know that is worth 
knowing.’^ 

These were the sort of stories we got telling 
in the station-house, and it was out of such talk 
that the project of the Club grew. We had not 
known each other before, but here was one tie 
we all had together. Could we not then recog- 
nize it, by some sort of gathering or correspond- 
ence, or union? Natural enough to propose, 
but you see, of course, what followed. 

First, Widdifield — as good a fellow as lives, 
but set, or as the vernacular says, “ sot,’’ in his 
ways — liked the idea of a Club very much; but 
thought we must appoint a committee to draw 
up some little mutual covenant or expression of 
principles which all the members would willingly 
agree to. “ Something, you know, to give us 
a little substance.” Will IVIorton did not care 
so much for any statement of principles, but 


2-1 TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

thought there had better be a constitution made. 
If he had not changed his coat, he should have 
had in his pocket the constitution of the Philire* 
nean, which would perhaps have served as a 
good model. Mary Merriam did not care about 
any constitution, but thought the society ought 
to have a name that everybody would under- 
stand. Poor Bridget Corcoran did not take in 
much of all this, but hated clubs. The Sham- 
rock Club, that her husband had belonged to 
had worked all his woe. So one thought this 
and another said that, and the thing happened 
which, so far as I know, always happens, even 
when ten of the simplest minded people in the 
world meet together with any common purpose 
There has to be a certain fixed amount of talk, 
— what Haliburton calls the “ talkee-talkee 
stage.” It corresponds to the fizz of common 
air when you open a gas-pipe for the first time. 
It blows out your match, and you have to wait 
some little while before any thing arrives that 
will burn. 

One of the Wise Men of the East — was it 
Louis Agassiz ? — said, when he first came here, 
that one of the amazing things which he found 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


25 


in America was, that no set of men could get 
together to do any thing, though there were but 
five of them, unless they first “ drew up a con- 
stitution.’’ If ten men of botany met in a hotel 
in Switzerland to hear a paper on the habits of 
Tellia Guilielmensis, they sat down and heard 
it. But if njne men of botany here meet to 
hear a paper read on Shermania Rogeriana, 
they have to spend the first day, first in a tempo- 
rary organization, then in appointing a committee 
to draw a constitution, then in correcting the 
draft made by them, then in appointing a com- 
mittee to nominate officers, and then in choosing 
a president, vice-president, two secretaries, and a 
treasurer. This takes all the first day. If any 
of these people are fools enough, or wise enough 

persistent ” is the modern word), to come a 
second time, all will be well, and they will hear 
about the Shermania. 

This was the little delay which killed oui 
little Club at the moment of its birth, if, indeed, 
it were killed or were born. With regard to 
that there is a doubt, as you fellows will find 
out if we should ever get back to this story 
again. 


26 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


[At this point, however, the Quarter Master, 
who had been dying to say something, interrupted 
Ingham to say it would have been better if the 
Club had had something to eat, as the organ- 
ization went forward ; and on that, that profane 
Dalrymple said, “ Better something to drink.’^ 
But Ingham placidly explained that there had 
never been any thing at the station but dough- 
nuts, and those somewhat tough and musty, 
and that these had all been eaten by members 
who had no dinner ; that for supper there was 
nothing left but lozenges, of which the supply 
was unlimited, but of which man’s power of 
consumption is of nature small. ] 

So we spent the rest of our five hours discuss- 
ing the covenant, the name, and the constitution 
of our little society, — and when at last we 
neard the scream of the express, and saw its 
light, we were further from the organization 
than ever. Everybody looked for scrip and 
staff (carpet-bag and cane). Everybody seized 
his coat or his shawl ; and poor Widdifield and 
Morton were just heard pleading for a committee 
to draw up a constitution, or “just a little 
formula, you know” when the train stopped, 


WHAT BEGAN IT. 


27 


and we stowed away as we could, in the sepa 
rate cars. 

For all that, however, these people loved 
Harry with their hearts’ love ; and not one of 
them meant to fail in the impulse he had given ; 
no, nor ever did fail. And though, as I said, 
the Club never met again, and never can, per- 
haps it has existed to as much purpose. After 
the train was under way, I passed along from 
car to car, and asked each of them if he would 
not write me some day, if any thing turned up 
which brought Harry to his mind, or which 
Would have pleased him. 

Everybody said, “ Yes.” And what is more, 
everybody has done as he said. So I have this 
mass of letters you saw in my desk, marked 
“ Harry Wadsworth and it is that mass of 
letters which gives me the material for the really 
curious story, or stories, I am going to tell you. 

If you will come round to my tent after the 
parade is over, I will show you some of them. 


CHAPTER IL 


THREE YEARS AFTER, 
f What there was in the Letters.\ 

fellows did not come up to my tent, 
regimental headquarters, that night. We 
were on our way up after the parade, when pop, 
pop, pop, some red-shirted pickets cracked ofl 
their rifles, frightened by some goats I believe ; 
for all this happened in one of the Calabrian 
Valleys. The companies were filing off to 
supper as the shots were heard, but halted 
promptly enough, and, in a minute more, we 
were all brought back to parade again. I ordered 
some kettles of polenta brought down for the 
men to eat, and we lounged and lay there, wait- 
ing news and orders for a couple of hours. Then 
it was clear enough that the whole had been a 
false alarm, and I let them go to bed. 

But a week or two after, Dalrymple, who had 
made a good deal of fun about the Club, came 
round, and Frank Chaney with him. Dalrymple 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


20 


knew that I would not have any nonsense about it, 
and indeed he was quite in earnest himself when 
he asked me to bring out the papers and tell 
them more about the Club and its history. I told 
him what I tell you, that there was no history ; 
there were only these letters, nine of them as it 
happened, folded together and marked “ Harry 
Wadsworth.’^ An odd-looking set they were. 
A letter from my wife Polly, written exactly on 
the third anniversary of Harry’s funeral ; letters 
of all sizes and shapes, written on tappa, brown 
paper, white paper, all sorts of paper ; stained, 
faded, and broken at the edges, but all of them 
telling of the lives that these nine of the original 
Club had been leading. Indeed, when we came 
to look at the dates, they were all written within 
a month of that same anniversary of the day 
which we wasted together in the station-house, 
called deepo^ at North Colchester. 

The letters were : — 

A. . Dictated by Biddy Corcoran to her son 
Will, and in the most elegant of clerkly hand- 
writing, down strokes hard and up strokes fine, 
I assure you. 

B, Caroline Leslie’s — she had not changed 


‘10 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


her name in marrying her cousin Harry, the 
same who gave her the canary-bird. She wiote 
from Cronstadt, Maine. 

C. George Dutton, written as above, on 
tappa cloth from one of the Kermadeck Islands, 
in the South Pacific. 

D. Mrs. Merriam, — quiet, every-day letter^ 
from 14 Albion Street, Brooklyn. 

E. As above, Polly Ingham’s to me, when I 
was very far off soundings. 

F. Widdifield’s — he had accepted a place 
as professor in Clinton College, Kentucky^ 

G. Will Morton’s — he was clerk of court 
in Ethan County, Vermont; always has been 
clerk of court, as his father was before him, and 
as his son will be after him. 

H. John Merriam’s — book-keeper he, with 
Pettingill & Fairbanks, Chicago. 

I. From Mrs. Emerson — head of a girls’ 
boarding-school in Fernandina, Florida. And 

had filed, in the same file, a little paper of 
memoranda of my own. So there were really 
the autographs of all, save Mrs. Corcoran, of the 
ten of the Club which tried vainly to form itself 
at North Colchester. 


THREE iEARS AFTER. 


31 


Ah ! what a pity it is that I may not print all 
these letters, now and here. If only I, Frederic 
Ingham, could be the editor of a monthly mag- 
azine of my own ! If only I had 85,555 readers, 
on the moderate estimate of five readers to each 
copy sold, and they were all so prejudiced in 
favor of the Old as to like to read old letters, and 
yet so tolerant of the New as to be willing to 
read my speculations upon them ! Then what a 
title-page could I not make up from these letters 
alone, for the whole of a number, giving a 
courteous refusal to all “ eminent contributors,” 
and all good assistants not quite so eminent 
To make our “ contents on cover: ” — 

Biddy Corcoran’s Home. By Herself, 

Life by the Furnace. 

The Kermadeck Islands. 

Housekeeping. By a Connoisseur, 

Polly to Fred. 

Recollections. Prof, Widdifield, 

Three Years of Life. W. Morton, 

The West as I saw it. By a Big Boy, 

A New Boarding-school. Mrs, Emerson, 

10 X 10 = 100. Fred, Ingham, 

There, is not that a good title-page for the 


32 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


outside of your new magazine? Would not 
that make Mr. Horace’s mouth water, as he drew 
up his advertisement? Would not those run- 
ning titles be attractive as men opened the uncut 
pages ? If ! ah if only I might myself control 
these MSS. “ It must not be, this giddy trance.” 
I must confine myself to the probable restrict 
tions. “ Five thousand words, or, at the outside, 
five thousand five hundred for a single number.” 
These are the hated limits in which I live and 
move and have my hampered being. Is there 
not some worthless epithet above which I can 
strike out ? Ah no ! better omit all Will Corco- 
ran’s commercial college cliirography in one 
lump, and come without preface to pretty Caro- 
line Leslie. 

CAROLINE LESLIE’S LETTER. (b.) 

It is SO queer to see where people will turn up 
when you least expect it. Now Caroline Leslie, 
since the funeral, had married her cousin Harry, 
the same, as I said, who gave her the canary- 
bird ; and he had taken her down to the : ron- 
works at Cronstadt, in Piscataquis County. 
Pretty girl, how little she thought, when she was 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


3:5 


giving the canary-bird his sugar, that she was to 
spend five years of her life in a house just one 
grade above a log-cabin, with two rooms on the 
ground floor, and a bed in her parlor, and — 
which was perhaps the only part of it amiss 
— that all her friends in Worcester were to be 
saying that it was “ so fortunate ’’ that her hus- 
band had such a good position ! Good position 
it was, for all the bed in the parlor. For there 
Caroline and Harry first subdued the world 
there were her first three children born ; and 
there, as the letter showed, she also had done her 
share of Harry Wadsworth’s work, in Harry 
Wadsworth’s way. 

When they went down there, it was chaos 
come again, I can tell you! An old iron-furnace 
which, had been built in the most shiftless and 
careless way, had made for a year or less some 
iron of the worst quality, so that the reputation 
of the ore was all lost, and had then been left to 
burn out. A new company, with some capital 
from Ibbotsons or Tubals, or some sort of foreign 
iron people, had gone in, and had sent down 
George Landrin, who knew something about 
making iron, to redeem the reputation of the 


<$4 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


place, and Harry Leslie to be treasurer and 
manager as far as George Landrin was not. 
Instantly, as I need not say, Harry Leslie and 
Caroline Leslie were married. That was the 
firs*^ link that the new iron company forged, and 
they forged it without knowing that they did so, 
by appointing him assistant treasurer, with a 
salary of fifteen hundred a year. They were 
married, went to Cronstadt in the first wagon 
after the roads were in any sort opened, and 
lived there, thirteen miles from the next town> 
in a village of iron men ; theirs one of three 
framed houses — all, as I said, one grade above 
a log-cabin. 

“ Hajj any ssiety thar ? ” said Mrs. Grundy to 
Caroline one day when I met Caroline at her 
father’s, where she had come up to Thanksgiving. 
How Caroline’s eyes snapped and flashed fire ’ 
The best society, Mrs. Grundy, I ever knew.'’ 
And so it was, indeed, thanks to Leslie, and 
Landrin, and Harry Wadsworth, and the founder 
of all good society, the Saviour of all such holes 
as they found Cronstadt, whose notions in this 
matter Harry Wadsworth and these fellows had 
had the wit and heart to follow. 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


3 ^ 


Here is the letter: — 

“ Ceonstadt, November 7 

J^Dear Mrs. Ingham: 

“I have never forgotten that, as we came 
home from Mr. Wadsworth’s funeral, I promised 
your husband I would some day write to you 
about him. And though I have put it off so 
long, I have always meant to do it. But you 
know how time goes by without our putting pen 
to paper. It was three years ago that we all 
met there together. I cannot believe it. 

“ But to-night I am going to write to you, foi 
I do not know where your husband is, and he 
must take this as a letter to him. For I have 
been thinking of Mr. Wadsworth all day. 1 
think of him, and of things he used to say and 
do, a great deal now we are here in this new 
life, and I have to try so many experiments, and 
do so many things for the first time. To-day is 
Sunday, and on Sundays I see the working-men 
here even more than I do on other days, and 
they are more disposed to talk, or perhaps I am. 
Harry has been gone for nearly a week now, and 
will not be back till next Saturday, so Mr 
Landrin and I and Sarah had to manage about 


lEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 




the tunes and singing as we best could last night 
But to-day we had stalwart help, and I wish you 
had been here to see and hear our choir. We 
Btiii meet for service, as we did when you were 
here, in the upper carpenter’s shop ; but yesterday 
Sarah and Eunice drove the men out just before 
dark, and began to dress the two chests which 
make the pulpit with colored leaves, and this 
morning they completed their decoration, and 
made quite a brilliant show. Joe Deberry, that 
French cbcircoal man who got you the Lycopo- 
dium, was very efficient and sympathetic. Mr. 
Landrin played the flute; Will Wattles read 
part of a sermon out of the ‘Independent;’ 
dear old Mr. Mitchell ‘ led in prayer,’ and we 
really had a good time — I did, and we all did. 

“ When we sat round talking, after the service, 
on the boards and the benches, and a good many 
outside in the sun, I attacked old Mrs. Follett, 
and won her heart by asking her how I could 
dye some yarn I have here. She has always 
been a little shy of me, but she got talking about 
this place as it was in the old dynasty. 

“ It was hell, Mrs. Leslie ! I beg your pardon, 
but it was just heL and nothing else.’ And 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


37 


really, I believe it was. When she told me of 
the drinking and gambling and fighting of men, 
and fighting of dogs, and of cocks, and of hens 
and women, I believe, — of every thing really that 
could fight, — why, Mrs. Ingham, when she told 
me about what her own husband was, who is 
now as nice a man as there is in the shop, and 
what a life she led with him, I wondered whether 
this were the same world. She thought Mr. 
Landrin and Harry had done a great deal more 
han they have. I am sure all we could do here 
is very little. But Harry has put his foot down, 
and Mr. Landrin has been very willing to help; 
and they have said that if they and their wives 
were here, it should be a decent place to live in ; 
and when I see how happy and pleasant the 
people are, and when I think how little I used 
to know about such places and people at all, I 
thank God for bringing me here. 

“ All the singers have been up here to-night 
practising. I wish you knew them all as well as 
you learned to know Sarah and George Fordyce 
when you were here. There are some of them 
who have just that sort of passion for my Harry 
that your husband has for Harry Wadsworth 


38 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


But when they talk to Mr. Leslie about what he 
has done for the place, he laughs, and points at 
Harry Wadsworth’s picture, and says, ‘ Don’t 
thank me, — thank him.’ Well, to-night ten of 
them came round to sing, and before we began 
they produced a beautiful frame for Harry’s 
picture, and asked me to let them put it in, for a 
surprise to my husband when he comes home. 
Then they began to talk to me about him, and I 
told them — well, you know what I told them. 
And I could see the tears roll down George 
Fordyce’s face as I talked to them. And when 
they went away, he said, ‘ We have never known 
what to call this choir class. I move it be 
called the Harry Wadsworth Club.’ And they 
all clapped their hands and said it should be so. 
So after all, you see, your husband’s club is 
born. 

“ But 1 must stop. I hear Wally crying in 
the other room, — and you know I am my own 
nurse now. 

“ Give my love to Mr. Ingham when you 
write. Always, dear Mrs. Ingham, 

“ Your own. 


“rUROITNE liESLIE.” 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


39 


I like that letter; I like thatwonian; I like 
that place, Cronstadt; and I like the life they 
lead there. But I should not have filed that 
letter, and carried it to Italy and Sicily with me, 
if the others that came about the same time had 
not belonged with it ; so they all got tied up 
together. Try this : — 


PROF. WIDDIFIELD’S LETTER. (f.) 

“ Clinton College, Bourbon Countt, 
Kentucky, November 10 

“ Kev. F. Ingham, etc., etc.: 

“Dear Sir, — In private conversation with a 
few of our young gentlemen here, I showed to 
them such of the letters of our dear Mr. Wads- 
worth as I have with me. They have been very 
much impressed by their spirit, freshness, and 
insight into true life. Do you see any impro- 
priety in my printing privately, say a dozen 
copies for such of these friends of mine as I 
think might find advantage in them? And 
should you be disposed to add to them a copy 
of a letter you once read to me, which Mr. 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

Wadsworth wrote to you when he entered Into 
he Polk and Clay canvass so honestly ? 

“ Very truly, 

“ Your obedient servant, 

“ Increase Widdifield.” 

You say those two letters are exactly alike 1 
Of course ; they are all alike. This tappa-cloth 
letter is just like that glazed note-paper from 
Brooklyn. Want to hear tappa-cloth? It is 
not in New Zealandee. Here is the end of 
it; — 

“ It is not true that I am always in scrapes. 
You say so, I know; but I do live the steadiest, 
stupidest life of any eight-day clock of them all. 
Only you do not hear of that. It is only when 
1 am dragged out of the water by the hair of my 
head that I am put in the newspaper, or happen 
to mention the incident, and then you all say, 
* Dutton is always being dragged out of the 
vrater.’ This time it was not metaphorically. 

“ 1 had gone off in the Monarchy as she took 
our six months’ collection of heche-la-mer^ to see 
the last of her officers and to get them well out* 
side the reef, and I had with me my own canoe, 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


4i 


and eight of these native boatmen. They are 
the best fellows in the world. See if you do not 
say so before I have done. I bade the English- 
men good-by ; they lay to while I jumped down 
into my boat; and we were off, and I started 
back for the Cannibal Islands, all my men 
paddling. Things looked a little grum when 
we started; there was just the beginning of a 
nasty Souther, and, to tell the truth, I stayed in 
the captain’s cabin a little later than I meant to. 
But the men did not mind. I don’t think they 
would mind if they had been in so many cocoa- 
nut shells with salt-spoons to bale wjth. They 
just stretched to their paddling, begged the after 
man to see that I was warmly covered, and 
oegan chanting this missionary song, — 

* Womar iti enata bacha epoku.* 

How well I came to know that refrain before 1 
was asleep, and after! For I did fall asleep, and 
the first thing 1 knew George caught me by the 
leg, dragged me awake, and showed me that we 
had come to the breakers. The sun was down, 
but it was light enough, what with waves, ano 
phosphorescence, and stars, to make the wildest 
sight that ever you or I looked upon. InghariL 


42 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


the thing I thought of was the Cottonwood 
claims, and my run for my life, and Harry 
Wadsworth’s appearing to the rescue. I knew 
it would all be over in two minutes. But I 
spoke cheeril ; to the men ; said, ‘ All righV 
which is one of their favorite words, had that 
strange feeling come over me, which I dare say 
you have felt, when one looks death right in the 
face — the feeling, ‘ Now I shall know nodded 
\o George, who calls himself in their pretty way, 
nia-keiki,’ which means foster-brother, and said, 
‘ God bless you ’ to him, and the next second we 
were under twenty feet of water. Nobody but 
madmen would have expected to cross that reef 
with that gale blowing! 

“ Of course I came to the surface, and of 
course the curlers swung me over the coral in 
less than no time ! If only they did not swing 
me upon the next ledge in lesser yet ! I could 
not hold out five minutes in that swirl and spray, 
and I knew I could not. But before I had time 
to think much about it, before I had even a 
chance to clear the water from my eyes to try 
to see about it, a strong wiry hand had me 
under the armpit, and I heard George’s gentle 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


43 


?oice say, ‘ All right,’ and then in their o Am 
language he went on to tell me not to be fright- 
ened. I was frightened, for the first time, for 
I thought I knew the faithful fellow could do 
nothing for me, and I was afraid he would lose 
his own life trying to save mine. In much few- 
er words T told him so. But he said just as 
sweetly as before, ‘ If I die, you die ; and if 1 
live, you live.’ And just then I began to see 
and near us, in this hollow where we were, 
between two ridges of breakers, was another of 
these loving creatures, who said just the same 
thing, ‘ If I die, you die ; if I live, you live.’ 

“ Ingham, I believe the men saved me by say- 
ing that more than by all the wonderful things 
they did in the next half hour. It seemed to 
me that it would be so mean if I swamped them 
or sunk them, that I stuck to my work as I never 
would or could have done had I been alone. 
And they — the way they lifted, and pushed, 
Hiid pulled, — the way they towed me and shoved 
me, — if we ever meet, you will laugh yourself 
to death as I tell you, and yet it was no laugh- 
ing matter then. All eight held together, and 
held by clumsy, logy me. The) understood 


44 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


each other by instinct, and they took me in as 
they would have taken in an upset canoe if they 
had found one floating in the offing. 

“ In half an hour I was lying on the beach 
here ; these loving fellows were chafing me, 
lomy-lomying me, and rubbing oil into me. I 
could not speak, but I was alive and in this world. 

“ And what do you suppose was the first 
thing they did ihe next morning. I was asleep, 
as you may imagine, but at sunrise every man 
of them went off* in the offing, which was calm 
enough now, to hunt up what was left of my 
boat and to bring her in. And when I scolded 
George for this, and told him the boat was not 
worth the risk, he said they knew I loved the 
boat ; they knew I had named the boat ‘ Harry,’ 
and that my Harry-boat was not to be lost if 
they could save her. Fred, that was the first 
time I broke down. I fairly cried at that. And, 
ever since, they have called themselves the 
‘ Harry-boatmen.’ ” 

You see it is as I said, they are all the same 
letter, only they are written by different hands, 
in different inks on different sorts of paper. 


THREE YEARS AFTER. 


45 


Polly had tied them all up, as they came in, 
one after another, for six months, and labelled 
them “ Harry Wadsworth,” as you saw. Then 
one day as she went over them, she was tempted 
to count up the people whom these ten letter- 
writers told of, as having got clew to our en- 
thusiasm about him. 

Here were Caroline Leslie’s Harry Wadsworth 


Club 10 

Prof. Widdifield’s Seniors 12 

George Dutton’s Harry-boatmen 8 

John Merriam’s set 7 

Mrs. Emerson’s “ first class ” 11 

Biddy Corcoran, Will, the Tidd boys and the Tidd 

boys’ father and mother 8 

Mrs. Merriam’s Sewing Club for Newsboys ... 13 

Polly’s two children and the two servants, with 

Mrs. Standish 5 

Will Morton and the Base-Ball Club at Ethan . . 19 

And the men in my own watch, the old quarter- 
master and his son, and the others who messed 
with them, were ) 


Polly counted them up. There were 103 in 
al. But Biddy Corcoran and Will Morton had 
been counted in the old Club of the station. 

There are 101 new members,” said Polly. 
“ Ten times ten is a hundred. And it was only 
three years aeo.” 


CHAPTER III. 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 

\An Experience of Dalrymple’s.] 

ELL! we .subdued the world as we could 



^ in Calabria. Then we returned to our 
respective homes : Garibaldi to his island, I to 
No. 9 in the Third Range, Frank Chaney to 
Sc**ooby, and Dalrymple to that truly English 
nome in Norfolk, which nothing had driven him 
from but the unrest of an Englishman, — some 
lo gad-fly, — and the desire of seeing Italy 
righted, and Vittorio on the throne of Bourbon 
In these respective spheres, as assigned to us, 
we did our part ; and I, for mine, embarked in 
the manufacture of a new sphere and new 
world, of which no more at present. 

Then was it that the parents of Dalrymple 
urged him to do his duty to the respectable 
Norman baron who founded his line, and “ settle 
down.” Then was it that Dalrymple, seeking 
for trout in a brook that ran through the ances* 


^’EN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


47 


tral domain, met Mabel Harlakenden, the young- 
est daughter of a neighboring house. She was 
sitting on a mossy rock, her feet hidden in ferns, 
and reading “ Coventry Patmore.” Dalrymple 
and she had not met since he broke her father’s 
window with a horse-chestnut on the day 'of 
her tenth birthday. Then was it that he intrcK 
duced himself to her again, and fished no more 
that day, nor did she read any more. Three 
months after was it that in the parish church 
he gave her a ring. The minister took the ring 
and gave it to Dalrymple, and he then put it on 
the fourth finger of Mabel Harlakenden’s left 
hand. Then he was taught by the minister. 
And then they all went home to Dalrymple’s 
father’s house to live there. 

“ Was she a descendant of Mabel Harlaken- 
den of Kent ? ” 

Yes, she was. Why do you interrupt^ That 
has nothing to do with the story, and your 
question took nine words. 

Then Dalrymple proved to be less settled 
than ever. And it proved that Mabel liked 
travelling, if it were real travelling, just as much 

he. She hated P? ris, so did he. He hatea 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

Baden-Baden, — lucky for her, — so did she 
He had fished all Norway, so had she. She 
had hob-nobbed with bandits in Calabria, so 
had he. Had she ever been to America ? — 
“No, dearest, no!” Would she like to? He 
had a friend in America, who would put them 
through, — a man who was with him in Calabria. 
There was nothing Mabel would like better. So 
instead of “ settling down,” as good Mr. Charles 
Dalrymple had expected, these young people, 
three months after marriage, took passage in 
the Europa^ Captain Leitch, arrived in Boston, 
stopped at Parker’s, took the evening boat to 
Hallowell, train next day to Skowhegan, and in 
two days more were laughing and talking at our 
table at No. 9, in the Third Range. 

The prettiest English girl I ever saw was Ma- 
bel, — is Mabel, let me say, as she is not here 
to frown. Dalrymple got his wooden bowl that 
time. No 1 I will not describe her. You should 
have asked him, if you wanted to know. And 
Mabel and he fished in our brooks, guided by my 
Alice and Paulina, who in their way were as 
good fishermen as he. 

One night, as we sat together, Dalrymple said. 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED 


49 


Will you show my wife those Wadsworth 
Papers ? ” 

“ Do show them to us, Mr. Ingham,” said the 
pretty girl. “ Horace has told me about them 
once and again, — they were the very first things 
I knew of you.” 

Well pleased, I produced the papers, and 
showed them all I have shown you, and more. 
Then we fell talking together about Harry, and 
the Leslies, and Dutton, and all these people 
and Polly raked out more letters, which I hav’*^ 
not pretended to show you, telling how they had 
all fared in the three years which had gone by 
Since she tied those nine or ten together. Then 
Dalrymple asked if, in America, people always 
shot apart from each other as all of us had done, 
— here was Harry, born in Maine, to die in 
Massachusetts; here was I, born in Connecti- 
cut, living in Maine ; here was Dutton, born in 
Massachusetts, drowning off the Kermadeck Is- 
lands. Was it always so? And I told him the 
census would tell him that in 1860 there were 
near seven hundred thousand people in Iowa, 
where in 1850 there were not two hundred thou- 
sand ; that the other five hundred thousand were 
4 


50 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


bom somewhere ; and that the same year there 
were one hundred and twenty-six thousand peo- 
ple who had been born in Maine, who were 
living in other States, while only four times that 
number, men, women, and chil^icen who were 
Dorn in Maine, were living there. I suppose 
that half the men and women had emigrated. 
“ Happy country,” cried Dairy mple, where no 
man settles down ! ” 

Then Mabel suggested to him that as they 
had no plan of travel, as it would be fatal if they 
should settle down in No. 9, which they seemed 
ikely to do, he could have no better clew to fol- 
low in this labyrinth of States than the thread of 
the very letters he had in his hands. “ You love 
Harry Wadsworth,” she said, “ as well as any 
one can who never saw him. I am sure I do.” 
And her great blue eyes were full of tears. “ Let 
us go and see Mrs. Emerson in Brooklyn, — I 
am sure dear Mrs. Ingham will give me a lette 
to her; you shall go to Vermont, — is that the 
name ? — and see Mr. Morton ; we will both go 
to Chicago, — which till I heard you speak, Mr. 
Ingham, I always called Chickago, — and Harry 
Wadsworth shall introduce us ^o America.*' 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


51 


And so it wsls ordered. They stayed with us a 
month longer. I will not tell how many trout 
they caught, for I should have every cockney 
scared from the Adirondacks down on No. 9 if I 
did. But at last the good-byes came, and they 
started on their way. 

No ! I shall not write the history of their 
travels. Little Mrs. Dalrymple may do that 
herself, and I wish she would. I have only to 
tell where they crossed Harry Wadsworth’s track 
again. 

Dalrymple chose to take boat, instead of rail, 
west from Buffalo. So they sailed one evening 
in the Deerhound, a famous boat of those days> 
and their first experience of the floating palace 
of the western waters. Sunset, twilight, evening 
of that June day, were as beautiful as hearts 
could wish, and again and again this young 
bride and bridegroom congratulated themselves 
that they had forsworn the train. When bed- 
time came, Horace led Mabel in from the guards 
where they had been watching the moon ; but 
before they went to their state-room after mid- 
night, they stopped to watch some euchre-play- 
ers who were sitting up late in the great saloon 


f»2 TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

As they sal there, the captain lounged in. They 
knew him by sight; he had done the honors at 
the tea-table. He came up to the table, and 
said, “ Gentlemen, I want you to come forward, 
and see this schooner on our quarter.’’ Mabel 
took her husband’s arm to go with him ; but the 
captain said, “ No, madam, it is too damp for 
you ; we will not keep your husband long,” and 
with the other men walked away. 

Horace stayed — how long — one minute or 
ten — Mabel does not know. But when he came 
back it was very quickly, and he said in a low 
tone to the three women who sat together around 
the deserted table, “ The boat is on fire ; dress the 
children, and wake the passengers as quietly as 
you can. Mabel, wait for me in the after-part 
of the saloon below this. I will come to you 
there.” And he was gone. 

Mabel was probably never so completely her 
own mistress in her life. She saw that the 
saloon was as yet uninvaded. She called the 
sleepy chambermaids, and gave them their mes- 
sages so calmly that they were not frightened, 
?rom state-room to state-room she passed along, 
id knocked up the sleepers, till her share was 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 5H 

done, and well ^ne. Then she went to their 
own state-room, took the travelling-sack in which 
Horace had his money and his letters; went 
downstairs to the after saloon, to wait there as 
she was bidden. 

All this time it was amazing to her that there 
was so little noise. The engines were stopped 
That she noticed. She heard the men at work 
forward, but forward was far, far away. If she 
listened, she did not know what were the noises 
she heard, — plashes ; heavy blows as of cutting 
timber; plashes again, — an occasional sharp 
word which she did not understand, but around 
her the still monotone of the saloon, in which 
there were only herself and two little girls and 
their mother. And how long this lasted Mabel 
did not know. 

But at last the smoke came. Something — 
bulkhead or what — I do not know — something 
gave way forward, and the smoke came, driving, 
piling right in upon them, so that those hateful 
lamps which had been so still and dear and un- 
conscious, became, of a sudden, dim spots in fog 
The children cried and coughed. Mabel and 
their mother held them to the open windows- 


54 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


But this could not last, — the smoke was lea- 
ser and denser; the women dropped the clulcren 
out on a pile of cordage that was coiled up 
in the narrow passage-way behind the cabin, 
then clambered out of the windows themselves, 
and in that narrow passage, cramped between 
the cabin wall and the after-railing, stood alone 
with the little ones. Then, for the first time, she 
understood that some freak of the fire had cut 
her off from the main body of the passengers 
and from her husband. Or were they four 
together there, the only persons living out of all ? 
No ! somebody was alive forward, for although 
for a few minutes the air was almost clear, that 
lasted only for a few minutes; — the fire was 
gaining forward, and of a sudden the engines 
began to move again. The other woman said to 
Mabel, “ They are driving her ashore.” What- 
ever was the reason, it seemed fatal to therr 
The stream of hot air and hot smoke now circled 
all round them, so that indeed they could scarcely 
breathe. Mabel looked over the rail, and so did 
the poor mother. They could see the projecting 
after timbers and the rudder-head passing through 
hem, — they must do something, — and without 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


56 


a word Mabel climbed down, stayed herself 
firmly by one of the cross-chains which she 
found there connecting with the rudder, observed 
that neither chain nor rudder moved any longer, 
and then bade the other woman pass her one 
of the children, and come down herself with 
the youngest, which she did. How long that 
lasted, Mabel did not know, — whether it was 
five miles or five minutes that they rushed ove' 
that foaming sea, with that hot air above them, 
with this slippery foothold below, and her arms 
growing so tired as she held child and chain- 
Not so long but she did hold on, however, till of 
a sudden a sharp explosion forward taught them 
both that a crisis had come. In a moment more 
the way of the boat was checked, and in two 
minutes Mabel saw that all was still, — but 
the fire. Still that did not drift fiercely back 
upon them now. 

Nobody came near them. Probably nobody 
could come. But when that horrible wend 
motion over the foam stopped, Mabel was brav- 
er As for the other woman, she never showed 
sign of terror from the beginning. Mabel no\v 
found she could lower herself enough to sit upon 


56 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


the top of the rudder, and stay herself by a chain 
above. She did not dare climb up upon the 
boat again ; she then got the child in her arms, 
and moved out far enough to make room for 
the other woman. And there, with cinders and 
smoke flying over their heads, in water to their 
armpits, holding by rod and chain above them, 
each with a child embraced, — there those women 
sat, it must have been for hours. I remember 
Mabel told me she had to wet the rod above her 
with t^xe water at last, when the fire from the 
wreck above heated the rod so that she could 
hold it in her hand. She trained the child 
to splash water up to it so as to keep it cool. 

Meanwhile all they could see was flame and 
smoke in volumes borne high in the air, bul 
away from them, by the gentle wind, as the fire 
slowly worked its way along to them. All they 
could hear was the roaring of the flames. 

But flames and smoke were borne away from 
them. The wreck was drifting and drifting 
nearer and nearer to the Ohio shore. And so 
ill the gray morning the end came. It ground 
ed. Mabel had seen the stars grow pale, it had 
seemed to her that “the dawning gray would 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


57 


never dapple into day,” but it was lighter, — light 
enough for her to see the shore, — and then one, 
two, three little boats pushing towards them. 
And then for the first time these women spoke 
louder than their breath, and the little children 
cried aloud again with them. The cry did little, 
I suppose, but a white handkerchief did more. 
Swift and straight a flat-boat dashed down to 
them, a boat-hook struck in the stern-timber 
above Mabel’s head ; two men in the bows 
clutched the two women ; and some one cried, 
“ Back her, back her,” and they and the two 
children were safe. 

They took them to the kindest, loveliest, poor- 
est home in Ohio, which was just behind the 
beach. Tender hands undressed those women 
and children, chafed their swollen arms and 
hands, rubbed them warm and dry, dressed 
them in the best the cabin had, laid them on 
homespun sheets, as clean as they were coarse. 
And all four slept, — as you never slept. 

When Mabel awoke just before nightfall, and 
tried to make out where she was, wondering at 
the slabs above her and around her, at the walls 
papered with Frank Leslie’s journal, the only 


58 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


thing her eye lighted on, that she ever savB 
before, was the portrait of Harry Wadsworth. 
That was pinned upon the door. 

This, then, was what Mabel had taken the 
ring on her finger for; what she had left her 
father’s house in Norfolk for ; what she nad 
started to see the world for ! To find herself 
lying in these coarse homespun sheets, on that 
queer, high, creaking bedstead ; looking Harry 
Wadsworth’s picture in the face ; opening her 
fingers to see if she could open them, after all 
that clinging to the rod and chain ; and trying, 
by such foolish things as that, to keep herself 
from asking where Horace was — if he were in 
this world or in another ; where his body was — 
ah ! how wretched — and what she should do ? 
To pretend to drive these questions out of her 
head, she opened and shut her hands, and won* 
dered if the rust-stains would ever wash off, anc 
looked at her wedding-ring, and remembered the 
parish church and that winter morning when 
Horace put it there. It was not in that way 
that she would forget asking where he was, or 
if he was in this world or another ! 

Mabel sat up in the bed. Every thing seemed 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


59 


terribly still. She looked round the little room 
There was not a shoe or stocking on the floor 
nor any of her clothes on the one wooden chair. 

“ Alice ! ’’ cried Mabel at last. For “ Alice ” 
was the only name she knew of all the people 
who had surrounded her in these terrible hours. 
They had called the little girl “ baby,” though 
she was four or five years old. The children 
had called their mother “ mother,” and “ Alice ” 
was the only name that had been spoken. 

Alice did not come, but in her place a nice, 
motherly old lady came, who looked almost as 
different from anybody Mabel had ever seen 
before as if she had been one of Dutton’s Ker- 
madeck men. But there was the touch of nature 
there, and Mabel and she were kin. 

“ Dear child,” said the old woman, “ cannot 
you sleep any more ? Do you feel at all rest- 
ed ? ” 

“ Have they heard from my husband ? ” said 
Mabel,. “ have any more people been brought in ? 
are there any bodies ? ” 

“ Bodies ? Dear — no, no,” said Mrs. Morrow ; 
“ do not be troubled about the others ; there are 
plenty of people to take care of them, and the^ 


60 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


with their own boats too. Do not think about 
them, dear, and do not cry ; let me bring you a 
cup of tea, and then you shall have your clothes 
and dress yourself. The men will be back to 
supper, and we shall know all the news.” 

“ But tell me,” said Mabel, “ tell me where 1 
am, and where I can write to ? What must 
I do ? I never was alone before. I never had 
to do any thing before — like — like this, you 
know.” 

“ Like what, my dear lady ? — like taking a 
cup of tea — or like dressing yourself ? ” And 
Mrs. Morrow would not stop for an answer. 
There was a good deal of dry common-sense in 
Mrs. Morrow, who, after sixty years of emigra- 
tion, of a new home, of birth, life, and death, of 
joy and of sorrow, was no longer a fool. She 
was, therefore, without knowing it, a philoso- 
pher. “ Come, Amandy-Ann,” she cried, bust- 
ling back into the kitchen sitting-room, “come, 
Amandy-Ann, where are you Here’s the Eng- 
lish lady awake again, and nigh faint for her 
tea.” 

“ How did she know that I was an English- 
woman ? ” said Mabel to herself. She forgot 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


61 


that if Mrs. Morrow had turned up at the SwalF* 
ham station in Norfolk near her father’s house, 
and had asked her, Mabel, the way to Cockley, 
she would have known that Mrs. Morrow was 
an American, though she only spoke ten words. 
“ I must get up and do something,” said Mabel 
to herself again ; “but how can I get up till they 
bring me my clothes ? ” 

So they succeeded in keeping her prisoner for 
a long hour, while she “ worried down ” the tea, 
and ate a slice of toast, and tried to eat a slice 
of corn-bread, which was new to her, and broke 
an egg, as Mrs. Morrow had never seen an egg 
broken before. When she had pretended to eat 
a part of the egg, Mrs. Morrow relented so far 
as to let Amanda Ann bring in some dry cloth- 
ing, and so to emancipate Mabel from her 
prison. 

The men came home. An early tea was served 
— a meal such as Mabel never saw before. The 
rr)en were cheery, though with no grounds intel- 
ligible for cheeriness. But they explained that 
there were schooners which had run by Huron, 
alia a certain brig which was known to be beat- 
iiig up to St. Clair, and two freight boats and a 


62 


Tbt\ times one is ten 


flat which were bound down the lake, and much 
more than poor Mabel could understand, any of 
which alone could have rescued all the Deer- 
houndCs people, if, as no man permitted himself 
to doubt, they were all in their quarter boats 
Indeed, they could rescue themselves. How 
many hundreds of thousands this cheerful fleet 
might rescue if it were combined in one, Mabel 
was too downcast to inquire. 

Poor girl ! she put this and that together so 
far as to make out that we, far away in No. 9, 
in Maine, were the only people in America near 
enough to her for her to confer with, and she 
' asked Elnathan Morrow eagerly if he could 
not send a telegram to us from her. Of course 
he could. He would “ hitch up ” at once and 
drive over to Elyria and leave the despatch, so it 
should go the first thing in the morning. So 
Mabel wrote : — 

I am safe. But I do not know if Horace is. We 
ware in the Deerhound, 

Mabel Dalrympi-r 

To Frederic Ingham, 

No. 9. in the Third Range, Maine. 

By Skowhegau. 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


63 


iVfabel knew en< ugh to know that a telegram 
must be short. But she was not much used to 
money yet, poor girl, and she did not know that 
as the Western Union Telegraph Co. coins it, 
that despatch cost Elnathan every cent of ready 
money he had laid up to pay his taxes witn tho 
next week. But if he had not had the money, 
Mrs. Morrow would have sent her three tea- 
spoons to the watch-maker at Elyria rather 
than have that message delayed. Elnathan rose 
from table before the rest of them, harnessed 
up, drove to Elyria, and the next morning the 
Elyria “ Democrat ” announced that it stopped 
the press to say that four more persons had been 
rescued from the conflagration, a young English 
lady, and her companion, the mother of two 
children, who were with her ; and that “ all these 
persons were now resting at the mansion-house 
of our estimable fellow-citizen, Elnathan Mor- 
row, Esq., who has favored us with this infor- 
mation.” 

After Elnathan had left, poor Mabel did her 
very best not to be unsociable. Her companion 
on the wreck was still sleeping off the strain, in 
the same bed with her two children 


64 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


‘‘ l)o you know,” said Mabel, “ that the first 
thing I saw, when I opened my eyes, was the 
face of a friend ? At least I call him a friend.” 

“ Friend ? ” said Mrs. Morrow, troubled for a 
moment with the fear that the pretty Englisii 
girl was wandering. “ Who did you see ? ” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mabel, “ I only meant I saw his 
picture — Mr. Wadsworth’s picture.” 

“ Did you know Harry Wadsworth ? ” cried 
the old lady, and every one else at the table said 
in the same instant, substantially the same thing, 
Mabel explained that she had never seen nim 
herself, and at once, an air of disappointment 
showed that no one else at the table had ever 
seen him. But Mabel said to the youngest girl 
that if she would bring the little travelling-bag 
which had hung at her side all through the night, 
she would show her something. So the bag was 
brought from behind the stove, and Mabel found 
Ihat the key still turned in the rusted lock She 
pulled out a wet handkerchief, rusty scissors, the 
sloppy, stained bit of canvass work that she had 
been stitching on the afternoon before — was it 
yesterday afternoon or was it not sometime in 
jihe last century ? ^ — and down at the bottom she 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


65 


came to a mother-of-pearl card-case, which had 
stood the whole, undiluted. Mabel wiped it dry, 
opened it, looked a moment at another picture 
which was not stained nor even wet, and from 
behind that picture pulled out her picture of 
Harry Wadsworth. It was the last thing that I 
gave her, except my blessing, when she left us at 
No. 9. 

And then she explained, and they explained. 
None of them had ever seen Harry in the flesh. 
But here was Mabel who had seen me, who had 
seen him, and she had seen letters that he wrote, 
and if her trunk were ever found, in her port- 
folio she had a note of his that I had given her. 
And they — they knew about him. Mrs. Elna- 
than Morrow — the pale, thin, pretty young 
woman, the mother of the baby, the one that 
bad said so little, but had been frying the cakes 
ail supper-time, — she came from Ethan, in Ver- 
mont. Her brother Samuel was one of the Will 
Morton Base Ball Club ; and she had first met 
Elnathan, if she would have told the truth, at a 
reading club at Ethan, where Will Morton read 
“ Monte Cristo ” and “ Lady Geraldine ” to 
them. And her pale face flushed at last, and 
6 


6b 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


her silence thawed, and she did leave the grid- 
dle at last and came and sat at the corner of 
the table, as she warmed up to tell how Will 
Morton laid down the book one night, and 
talked to them all about Harry. And of course 
she told many stories of him, which I cannot 
repeat here ; and then Mabel got to telling some 
stories that I had told her. And Celia felt as if 
Mabel and she were old friends, and told her 
more about Will Morton, and about their life in 
Ethan, and about the Base Ball Club, and about 
her brother Sam, who had gone to Minnesota. 
She told about her own marriage, and how 
strange it seemed to her to come out here ; 
and Mabel learned that between Ethan in 
Vermont, and the southern shore of Lake 
Erie, there was as much difference as between 
Cockley in Norfolk and Ethan in Vermont; 
she learned that she was not the only girl that 
had left her father’s house to find a strange, very 
strange home. If Harry Wadsworth had never 
done any thing else, he had made sisters of 
those two women. So they all talked and talked. 
Just after the June sunset the youngest children 
slipped in with two great bowls of beautiful 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


67 


itrawberries, and Mabel ate from these as she 
talked, almost unconsciously. The fire in the 
stove went down, the griddle-cakes grew cold, 
and it was dark when their long croon was inter- 
rupted, as Mrs. Palmer, Mary’s companion in mis- 
fortune, opened the kitchen door and came in 

Horace ? He had been knocked on the head, 
as he was at work on the forward deck, very 
early in the business. Some one in the pilot’s 
box hove an axe forward to the mate, who had 
called for it. Horace was stepping across hastily, 
the axe struck him in the forehead, knocked him 
down, and he lay there senseless. The water, 
leaking from the hose that they were working 
with, dribbled down on his face sometimes, but 
nobody could stop to nurse him. 

But when the game was played through, 
when the last quarter boat hauled up under the 
bow of the Deerhound^ and the mate for the last 
time came on board, and said to the captain, 
“ You must come now, sir, there is not a living 
cat on the vessel,” the captain pointed to Horace 
as he lay there, and said, “ Silas, we will heave 
him down, too. Perhaps there’s life in /.lira 


68 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN 


Whether there is or not, it shan’t be said thal 
the only two English people in the boat went to 
the bottom. Handsome fellow he is! ” And the 
captain took Horace by the shoulders, and Silas 
took him under his hips and carried the senseless 
body to the opening in the rail ; they called two 
firemen who stood on the thwarts and handed it 
down, and laid it along as best they could, on 
the after thwart and in the hollow behind it. 
Then the boat-hooks shoved her off, and the boat 
followed the others. 

“ Them women,” said Silas, meditatively, 
“ must have stifled in ten minutes after he sent 
them there. What on airth made him tell them 
to go into the ladies’ saloon ? ” 

Horace was not killed. Else these pages were 
not here. The captain never believed he was 
killed. As soon as the men gave way at the 
oars, and the boat was well off the wreck, the 
captain cut off the waist buttons of Horace’s 
clothes, laid bare his breast, untied his neck-cloth, 
and again and again flung water in his face, as 
he lay in the arms of that good-natured German, 
who was wondering, perhaps, if this were the 
usual mode of travel in America. In fifteen 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


69 


minutes the muscular, full-blooded young Eng- 
lishman opened his eyes ; in three more he was 
wondering; then he shook himself free, sat up 
put his hand to his head, looked round, and 
began to ask questions. 

The burning Deerhound could still be seen, and 
in reply the captain pointed her out to him far 
astern. Then how boldly the captain lied, as 
the poor wretch asked after Mabel ! You would 
have thought Mabel was in a Lord Mayor’s 
barge upon the Cydnus, lying upon cushions, 
fanned by Cupids and rowed by Naiads, so 
emphatic were the captain’s assurances of her 
comfort and safety, — assurances which Horace 
was just stupid enough, with the blow, to believe. 
He grew faint again with his effort, needed a 
little of the Jamaica the captain gave him, and 
sank back, with his eyes blurred and his head 
spinning, on the German’s shoulder. 

Then it was that the second botch was made 
in the proceedings of that night. The boats 
Were all pulling for Huron, against a neavy 
western breeze which was freshening into a gale. 
The captain’s boat was the last of the little 
squadron, which was pulling in order — it must 


70 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


be near twenty miles — that they might not risk 
the beaching business with that heavy sea on. 
By daybreak the others were all safe, and were 
telegraphed as safe all over the country, while 
the same telegram reported that the captain’s 
boat was not heard from, and that two women 
and two children, and an Englishman, name not 
known, had gone down in the Deerhound. This 
botch all resulted, because, as the captain’s boat 
slowly followed the others, they crossed the line 
of the little Canadian brig which was beating 
across the lake back and forth, working her way 
home from Buffalo to Amherstburg. It was a 
natural thing, of course, to answer her friendly 
hail, a very natural thing to run alongside, a 
natural thing to take the line her skipper threw, 
a natural thing to go on board, all of them, and 
to take the boat in tow. Then as towards morn- 
ing the gale did freshen, and they had to stay on 
board, it was natural to stay. But because ot 
all this, so natural at every step, when in the fog 
of the next day she went ashore and bilged on 
Pelee Island, and they all crawled to land in wet 
jackets, that was a pity. That was the reason 
that for four days Horace though^- his wife was 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


71 


jh heaven ; and that for three of those same foul 
days she was more and more sure he was there. 

But Horace also fitted off his telegram to No 
9, in the Third Range. And his telegram worked 
through rather faster than hers, though it started 
later. The two arrived at Skowhegan the same 
night. And one express messenger was started 
for No. 9 in the morning with the two. The 
weak-minded brother neglected to bring any 
newspaper with him, so that all that Polly and I 
knew was in these words : — 

We were in the Deerhound. Mabel is lost. Ad 
dress Detroit. Horace Dalrymple. 

And in these, as above, — 

I am safe. But I do not know if Horace is. We 
were in the Deerhound. Mabel Dalrymple. 

What the Deerhound was or where they were, 
vie did not know. But Mabel’s despatch was 
dated Elyria and Horace’s was dated London, 
C. W ; and we knew that C. W. did not mean 
West Centre of the real London, but Canada 
West of the — new one. 

Poor< souls! Lake Erie was between them^ — 
and neither knew if the other were alive. 


72 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


We gave the boy his supper, fed his horse 
well, admonished him to bring a newspaper 
another time, and started him back with the 
return despatches : — 

Your husband is well. Address him at Detroit. 

F. INGHA.M. 

Your wife is well. Find her at Elyria. 

F. Ingham 

And with hopes that they would not go Evan- 
geliiiing and Gabrielling it all over the Western 
country till they died, we went to bed, still 
wishing the boy had brought a newspaper, 
and wondering what had happened to the 
Deerhound. 

Mabel got that despatch the third night, so 
she slept comfortably and happy. Two days 
still it was before she had any thing but the 
telegram to live upon ; but the telegram was 
enough, and good Mrs. Morrow’s chicken fixings 
and strawberries and young Hyson ” all helped 
a little. And they fitted off poor Mrs. Palmer, 
and little Alice and ‘‘ baby,” for Philadelphia. 
She thought she might as well go to Philadelphia 
as anywhere. And at last, five days, I believe, 
after the night of horrors, Horace came up be^ 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


73 


hind Mabel, as she sat in the piazza with Celia’s 
baby in her arms, put his brown hands on her 
two cool cheeks, bent over and kissed her, upside 
down ! And Mabel did not faint away I 

The next morning Dalrymple wrote to me al 
considerable length, giving some hint of the 
story I have been telling, and of his plans for 
refitting himself and his wife. Here is the end 
of the letter : — 

“ While all this goes forward we shall stay 
here, knowing where we are well off. Poor 
Mabel really is at home here with these nice 
people, who are just what you would call clever 
— as kind as they can be. Do you know, as 
soon as she opened her eyes, she saw Wads- 
worth’s picture, and it proved that the waves had 
flung her upon one more of what she calls the 
Harry Wadsworth homes. And I, — before this 
poor skipper I tell you of and I had talked five 
minutes on the logs there on Pelee Island, watch- 
ing his little vessel as she ground "^o pieces, I 
found he was one of Wadsworth’s men! What 
io you think of that? He was a rough cus- 
tomer, but when I said something sympathetic 


74 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


about the loss of the vessel, he answered aa 
cheerfully as a bird, evidently knowi.ig that it 
was all right. I told him he was a philosopher. 
‘ No,’ he said, very simply, handing me back my 
pipe from which he was lighting his, ‘ it is not 
in; philosophy, it is my religion. But I don’t 
like to call it so. Our notion is that a man had 
better not talk much about his religion, certainly 
had better not think at all about saving his soul. 
We think he’d better do what he can to save 
other people’s souls, or if he isn’t strong that 
way, save their bodies, or keep them from the 
devil, some way; and forget he has any soul 
himself, if he can’t do better.’ 

“ Only think, Ingham, of my hearing sucti 
words of wisdom out on a fresh-water beach, 
that did not know enough to have the tide rise. 
‘Who do you mean by “we”?’ I said. ‘Oh,’ 
said he, a little nervously this time, ‘ a little set 
of us, who don’t care to make any noise about 
our club; we call ourselves Harry Wadsworth’s 
men.’ 

“Ingham, I started as if I had been shot. 
Then I was afraid for a minute I was not right 
in my head, after this dig the axe had given me. 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


75 


But it was quite clear that the man and the lake 
and the logs were there, and I questioned him 
further. He made no secret of it; there were 
thirty or forty of them who had arranged to get 
together sometimes, in Detroit, to help each other 
as well as they could, in their charities, which 
he represented as mere nothings, but which I 
found afterwards were what the world’s people 
would make quite a fuss about, mostly among 
emigrants and sailors. This man, Woodberry, 
said, as simply as he said every thing else, that it 
was the only way he had ever experienced religion ; 
that his father and mother were religious people, 
and he had a brother who was a Baptist minis 
ter; but that he did not make much of their 
notions or their way, but that these Wadsworth 
people pulled him through a hard turn once when 
they found him sick in a sailor boarding-house, 
and he had found since that their religion proved 
a very good religion for him. 

“ When we passed through Detroit, he took 
me round to one of their meetings. It had some 
of the fuss and form that you and I have seen 
at lodge, and division, and communication meet- 
ings all the world over ; but it had a perfectly 


76 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


healthy tone, was true as truth, and tremendous- 
ly energetic. There was no vow of secrecy, but 
great unwillingness to get into the newspaper. 
When I showed my picture of Wadsworth, I 
ecame quite a hero. They were glad to hear 
of the founder of their club from one side more. 
Remember that, till that moment, I was in the 
clothes I swam ashore in. What should you 
say if I told you that it was the President of 
the Harry Wadsworth Club who introduced me 
to the Detroit banker who honored the draft on 
New York, in which I am at this moment 
dressed, and with which I am shod and hatted. 
So much for the photograph. 

“ They have told me of three or four other 
clubs somewhat like their own. But I do not 
think there is any effort made to form clubs. It 
is rather an accident as people drift together. I 
found they knew all your story of the meeting 
at the funeral, what you call ‘ Ten times one is 
ten.’ Some of them were friends of Morton’sj 
some of them had known Professor Widdifield’s 
scholars. They had a printed list of the ‘ origi- 
nal ten,’ as they called them. I showed them 
Mrs. Ingham’s calendar of the one hundred and 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED. 


77 


une people who had had their lives lifted up, and 
made less selfish in their different ways, as that 
man’s central influence extended. That pleased 
them; they had not, for instance, known any 
thing about the Kermadeck Islands, nor what 
had become of you or Mrs. Emerson. I showed 
them Mrs. Emerson’s letter to me, and told them 
about my visit to Mrs. Merriam. And then one 
of the statistical brethren proposed a count, 
whereat a more godly brother quoted Scripture 
and explained about David’s census. None the 
less did they count up the people they knew and 
I knew who this day count Harry Wadsworth 
as personal friend, personal comforter, adviser, 
and help to them. Ingham, there were one 
thousand and twenty-three ! 

“ I will write you again before we leave here. 
The house has but three rooms, but they make 
us very comfortable. Mabel needs rest, and has 
to get clothed again. 

“ Truly yours, H. D.” 

I read that letter to Polly, aYid she said, “ Ten 
times a hundred is a thousand. It was only six 
years ago.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 

HE Harry Wadsworth Club, which first met 



in the North Colchester station, had enlarged 
itself, in six years, without knowing it, — and 
without trying to enlarge, — to a thousand mem- 
bers. They did not know each other’s names, - 
and there were not many of them who cared to. 
They had a great many different constitutions. 
Some were clubs for singing, some were sewing- 
schools, some were base ball clubs ; and this 
rather formal one at Detroit, upon which, by good 
luck, Horace Dairy m pie had stumbled, had offi- 
cers, — a president, secretary and records, and all 
that. All you could say of these thousand people 
was that, in six years, the life of that young rail- 
road freight-agent had quickened their lives, had 
made them less selfish, and less worldly. They 
lived more for each other and for God, because 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 


79 


he had lived, and they knew that he had ren- 
dered them this service. They showed their 
knowledge of it in different ways, or some of them 
perhaps did not speak of it at all. Some of the 
younger and more demonstrative ones had secret 
breast-pins with H. W. in a cypher on them. 
Some of the others, like the Morrows, had Har- 
ry’s picture framed and hanging on the wall. 
Some of them, like me, carried it in their hearts, 
and needed no bit of paper. 

But as I say, in six years the ten had multi- 
plied to a thousand by as simple a process as 
this, — 

10 X 10 = 100. 100 X 10 = 1000. 

And, at this fascinating point, alas ! I must 
leave the detail of the story. Indeed, as you see, 
1 have had to leave it already. Of these thousand 
lives, I have told the story of only four or five, 
and only a very little part of that. If anybody 
should tell the story, it would be Horace Dal- 
rymple, who with his pretty Mabel travelled up 
and down America, backwards and forwards, 
as the Harry Wadsworth people advised him, 
sent him, or invited him, for three years and 
more, after that horrible night on the Deerhound, 


so 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


They saw a great deal of beautiful scenery, and 
I dare say they “ were shown ” — as the penny- 
a-liners love to say — a great many “ institu- 
tions.” They came out in the South Park in 
the Rocky Mountains ; and they went to the 
Middle Park and to the North Park. I do nO 
know wher^ they did not go. But they did not 
travel to see “ institutions.” They did not, in the 
first instance, go to hunt, or to fish, or to make 
sketches. They went where one of Harry Wads- 
worth’s men sent them to another. They went 
from prince to peasant, — you would say, — only 
there is never a peasant nor a prince west of the 
Atlantic, nor east of the Pacific. They went 
from cabin to palace, and from palace to cabin 
So they saw what so few travellers see, — the 
home life of the people here. 

These persons they visited did not sit in 
groups, with their best clothes on, talking about 
Harry Wadsworth. Not they! A great many 
of them did not speak his name in a year, may- 
be did not think of him for a month. “ It waa 
not that,” said pretty Mabel to me, when she 
was fresh from this Sinbad life, — “the freema- 
sonry of it was that you found everywhere a 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 


8J 


cheerful out-look, a perfect determination to 
relieve suffering, and a certainty that it could 
be relieved, — a sort of sweetness of disposition, 
which comes, I think, from the habit of looking 
across the line, as if death were little or nothing; 
ai/d with that, perhaps, a disposition to be social, 
to meet people more than half way.’’ 

Thus spoke the little Englishwoman ; and 1, 
in my analytical way, used to the inevitable 
three heads of the sermon, said to myself, — 
“ Humph, that is Mabel’s translation of faith, 
hope, and love.” 

Horace and Mabel, after their three years* 
journey, had found us living in South Boston. 
We were sitting after dinner one day on the 
wood-shed behind the house, which served us as 
a piazza, when Horace laid down his pipe, and 
asked me if I remembered explaining to him 
the way in which people dispersed over the 
United States, — so that the census shows that 
each State is made up from the children of all. 
I had forgotten it, but he recalled it to me. 

“ That was what first set me on this journey,’* 
said he, “ which has carried us so far. Now the 
queer thing about it is, that it is no special law 


82 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


of your country, this dispersion and radiation; it 
is a law of all modern civilization.’’ 

“ Of course it is,” said I. 

“ Of course it is,” said he. “ Here is this Con- 
necticut pinmaker.” And he took out from hh 
pocket-book a bit of green paper, evidently torn 
from a paper of pins, on which the man said 
that he was “pinmaker for the people of the 
United States, and for exportation to all parts of 
the world.” “ Now, that,” said Horace, “ is wha 
you call a piece of buncombe ; but, for all that 
it is true. The old statement is true, that if you 
import into Russia a bottle of champagne or a 
piece of broadcloth, you import liberal ideas 
there as truly as if you imported Tom Paine 
Commerce is no missionary to carry more o 
better than you have at home. But what you 
have at home, be it gospel or be it drunkenness, 
commerce carries the world over. As what’s- 
his-name said, the walking-beam of Livingstone s 
steam-launch preached as well as Livingstone, 
and a good many more people heard it.” 

“ It would not have said much if Livingstone 
had not been there,” said I, a little crustily. 

“ Don’t be sore, padre,” said Horace. “ No* 


TEN IIMES A THOUSAND. 


83 


Dody said it would. But you see Livingstone 
was there. That is just what I am saying. And 
there are Livingstones all over this world, wlio 
are not acquainted with the Royal Geographical 
Society. As we came on from New York last 
night, after Mabel turned in, I got out this note- 
book, and I added up the number of men and 
women who belong to these different Wadsworth 
clubs, who have travelled or settled in different 
parts of this world. Just look at them.” 

Sure enough I found Horace, — who was 
always a better acting adjutant than he was any 
thing else, — true to his nature, had entered in 
close columns, forty lines to a page, the people 
that any of the Harry Wadsworth people re- 
garded as being really in earnest in relieving the 
suffering of the world, and getting the world out 
of the mud. “ There’s a sort of law of average 
about it,” said Harry. “ Every now and then 
a member dies. Then I make a red star, — so, 
against him. But, on the average, you find that 
every working man, or especially every working 
woman in one of these lodges, or clubs, or sing- 
ing-schools, is represented at the end of three 
years’ time by ten persons whom he ha? started 


84 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


on a better kind of life than he was leading 
Delore. When I was with these people at De- 
troit after I got my head knocked open, we 
counted up a little more than a thousand, of 
what they called, in their stately way, ‘ affiliated 
members.’ Your wife, here, was one of their 
‘affiliated members.’ But I have got here, now, 
— in three years’ more time, — see here,” — and 
he turned over page after page of his crowded 
note-book. At the end was a rough count — 
10,140. “ That is what three years have made 
of one thousand and twenty-three, so far as we 
know. Of course, a great many of them are 
wholly out of our sight.” 

Little Pauline, who is an enthusiast about 
Harry Wadsworth, though she never saw him, 
clapped her hands with delight, as Horace said 
this, and cried out, “ Ten times one thousand 
IS TEN thousand.” 

“Do you learn that at the Lincoln School?” 
said Horace, with approval. “ I shall have to 
put you on my register, I believe. But what I 
was saying, Ingham, is this : Here are underlined 
with blue all the seafaring men in this list. See 
how many. With red are all the Englishmen, 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 


85 


Scotchmen, Germans, and the rest, whose homes 
are likely to be in any part of Europe, — see 
here, and here. With green are marked Ihe 
Asiatics: people at Calcutta, — there’s a man at 
Singapore, — all these are Japanese men. And 
these, underscored with black, — there are fifty- 
one even of them, — are in Africa; you would 
say it was impossible. But what with Algiers, 
Alexandria, Zanzibar, the Cape, and a good 
many men and women who went to Liberia, 
Harry Wadsworth and his loving life are rep- 
resented, so far as that, in Africa.” 

Then Horace went on to say, that for himsell 
his travelling was over. The people at home 
were wild to see Mabel and her baby. The child 
himself was weaned, and he should finally “ set- 
tle down ” with the two. ‘‘ I can do as much a: 
home in renewing this world, and bringing in 
the kingdom,” said he, “ as if the Arapahoes were 
scalping me. And I foresee that my mission 
ground is Norfolk, which I did not suspect when 
you and I were in Calabria. What I have to 
say now is this, that in Norfolk I shall constitute 
myself the assistant adjutant, for that quarter 
of the world, of these Wadsworth people. 1 


86 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


mean to keep up the list of these whom I hav« 
marked with red. If I write one letter every 
morning and one every evening to them, and 
four every Sunday, I can write in three years 
twenty-five hundred letters to one part of Euiope 
and to another. I mean to find out, before three 
years are over, what the radiating influence of 
one Christian life is, in a quarter of the world 
which the man never saw who lived that life.’^ 

We were talking this over, when we met the * 
others at tea. Mabel was full of it. She really 
knew the Coffins who had gone to Sweden and 
the Wentworths who were at Dresden, and I 
know not how many more she meant to write 
letters to, and get information. Mary Throop 
was taking tea with us. One of the real steady- 
going people she, capable of immense enthu- 
siasm, all the more, because she never shows any, 
— no, though you put her on the rack and pull 
her tendons asunder, — the approved way of 
awaking enthusiasm. She looked over Dairy m- 
ple’s book with approbation, nodded silently 
once and again, understood it all the better 
because no one explained it to her, smiled her 
approval as she gave it back, and said, “ I am 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 


87 


going to get a book. I am going to take 
Asia.» 

“ Will you ? ” cried Horace, exultant. “ I had 
not supposed anybody else would care any thing 
about doing it. But if you only will! You 
see, my dear Miss Mary, it is not the glorifying 
of this young man, that is the last thing anybody 
wants to do. It is that any life as noble as his 
and as pure as his never dies; and that his 
power to lift up the world is always going on ! ’’ 

Yes : Mary Throop saw that too. She had 
not enlisted herself for any work of mutual 
admiration. She wanted to register the real 
ditfusive power of right and truth and love and 
life. She would do her share. 

Horace thought a moment and said, “ If you 
really will take Asia, I know who will take 
Africa. Mabel, do you not remember that great 
black man on the railroad from Memphis ? Here 
is his name, Fergus Jamiesson. He will take 
Africa. He had been up the Niger. He had a 
passion for statistics. And I have his card 
somewhere. We can have the whole world. 
For there is nothing the Detroit men will like 
better than to keep up America. I will write 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

to-night to Taylor and to Wagner. They have 
the statistical passion there also.” 

“ For my part,” said Polly, “ I detest writing 
.etters to people I never saw. I believe you 
men like it, because you did it in the army, — 
and you thought King Bomba was beaten when 
you had emptied a pigeon-hole by putting all 
the papers into big envelopes, and writing on 
the outside ‘ Respectfully referred to Major 
Pendennis.’ 

“ For my part,” continued she, “ I had rathei 
he children should spend their money on a grab- 
oag at a fair, than bring me home a parcel of 
letters from the fair post-office, that were written 
at a venture, from somebody to nobody, to be 
posted nowhere, because they were good for 
nothing.” 

Mabel laughed and said, “ Amen, amen. But 
you see, dear Polly,” said she, “or you shall 
see, that these letters of ours are written by 
somebody of flesh and blood, to somebody of 
blood and flesh, with something in them and 
going — to Sweden, — mine are.” 

“ Humph,” said Polly incredulously, “ they 
will take the express train back to Weeden sta- 


TEN TIMES A THOUSAND. 


89 


tion when they get there.” But Mabel only 
laughed the louder, said she should write hei 
first letter then and there ; that Mary Throop 
should write hers and that Horace should write 
his. 

“ And Polly,” said I, “ shall pay the postage, 
out of our rag-money.” 

So the three first letters in this gigantic corre 
spondence were written that night in our sitting 
room in D Street. They were read, criticised, 
postscripts added, and then forwarded; and so 
the second half of the formation of the Club 
began. 


CHAPTER V. 


EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AND THE ISLES OF TIIJI 
OCEAN. 

it is true that the next three years of this 
history become a little less determinate. 
There is less of that “ realism,” as the critics call 
it, — which the critics so much dislike, because it 
makes you sure that what you read is true, in- 
stead of being bookish, and in general improb- 
able or unreal, as the critics think all truly good 
writing should be. You see it was on the 24th 
of March, 1870, that Dalrymple and his pretty 
wife left our house to take the City of Bmssels for 
Queenstown and Liverpool, — and from that day 
to this day I have never seen their faces more. 
Also Mary Throop has never been in D Street 
again. As for Fergus Jamiesson, 1 never saw 
him, far less the Detroit corresponding secreta- 
ries. What I am now to tell, therefore, of the 
three years between 1870 and 1873, I am to 


EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, ETC. 91 

compile from statistics, files of letters, and the 
law of general averages ; and it will have much 
more the vague air of ordinary history, therefore, 
than the truth truly told ever does, — from which, 
as you know, ordinary history is indefinitely 
removed. 

Sparing you the detail, then, in which pro- 
phecy and history fail alike, here is the sum of 
the story. Of the ten thousand Dalrymple had 
the names of I know not how many hundreds 
of men and women, who from this cosmopolitan 
country of ours had carried Harry Wadsworth’s 
name or his picture, or his printed letters, to one 
or another part of Europe, or if not these, had 
carried the spirit of his life there. They had 
what the Detroit men called the four corner- 
stones, — and in Detroit had painted on four slabs 
in their lodge-house : “ They “ looked up and 

not down,” “ they did not talk of themselves,” 
“ they always lent a hand,” and “ they were not 
afraid to die.” Yes, and they knew, but for 
Harry Wadsworth, they would have thought 
more of themselves, would have been brooding 
and regretting, — would have been slower to 
help, — and would have clung tighter to life, 


92 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


With these eight hundred, more or less, men 
and women, Horace and Mabel began their cor- 
respondence : three letters a day, counting hers, 
and five or six every Sunday. Well for them 
that postage was coming lower, — but they sold 
their foreign stamps for the benefit of the cause. 
That was an economy Mrs. Haliburton taught 
them. 

Well ! a great many letters never were an- 
swered, perhaps a third part. But on the othei 
hand, it proved at once that there were in Europe 
already many more of the apostles, as Dalrym- 
ple began to call them, than he and Mabel had 
any idea of. They had to open new books, with 
much wider margins, and much more space be- 
tween the lines. Iron-men had not been ironing 
in Sweden without carrying there the old Cron- 
stadt lore ; railroad men did not go to Russia 
without carrying there the North Colchester 
traditions ; young artists did not paint in Rome 
without talking to their model boys, brigands or 
beggars, as it might happen, in the spirit with 
which Harry talked to Will Corcoran and the 
Tidd boys. Nay, Horace even went down into 
Calabria and established an order there among 


EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA,' ETC. 


93 


people as black as the most veritable Carbonari; 
and he was fond of saying that he found there 
some Italians, who remembered the padre Col 
onel Ingham, and who had not forgotten what 
7 had told them, in my wretched way, of Harry. 

I think Mabel was most touched, when, as 
they were coming home through Thuringia, and 
had stopped on her account for a day or two, at 
the smallest and least pretentious inn that ever 
escaped from being put into Murray, the tidy girl 
who fried the trout, made the bread, smoothed 
the pillows, brushed away the flies, and in the 
evening played on the guitar, — proved to speak 
English, and proved to have learned it at Mani- 
towoc, in Wisconsin. Mabel was so far Western- 
ised by this time, that she clave to the German 
girl as to a sister, — more, I am afraid, for the 
flesh is weak, than if the girl had been a bar-maid 
in Norwich or in Aylsham, rather nearer Mabel’s 
home than Manitowoc was. Be this as it may, 
they sistcrized at once. Mabel talked Wiscon- 
sin to her, and she talked of the Lakes to Ma- 
bel, — broken English and broken German got 
cemented together ; and before they were done, 
the Fraulein had produced a Harry- Wadsworth 


94 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


breast-pin ! They had had a little church there 
in Wisconsin, back twenty miles from the lake, 
where one of Widdifield’s men was the minister! 
And this girl also had learned “to look forward 
and not backward, to look up and not down, to 
look out and not in,’^ and to “ lend a hand.” 
And when she came back to Thuringia, in the 
little guest-house there, she had organized a 
chorus of peasant-girls, who met her once a week, 
and read their Bibles together, and sung together, 
and knitted together, and four times a year gave 
away the stockings they knit to the old women 
in the charcoal huts, — the witches of seven 
generations ago, — and they did this in memory 
of Harry ! So far that little candle threw its 
beams ! They showed her the copy of “ Frank 
Leslie,” which had the picture of the dedication 
of the Wadsworth Library Hall in Pioneer, 
Missouri. 

But I said I would not run into detail. Nor 
will I even cumber the page by the nicely ruled 
table Dalrymple made up for me three years 
after he left us. I had enough rather copy 
•scraps from Mabel’s crossed letters. She wrote 
freely to us, and did not count those letters 


EUIIOPE, ASIA, AFRICA, ETC 

among the official ones. But I will not do that. 
Nor will I ask you to follow Mary Throop 
through the mazes of her Asiatic correspond- 
ence. Queer stamps she got, with her Singa- 
pore mails, and her Assam distribution offices, — 
and Galle and Shanghae and Petropaulowsky, 
and End-of-the-earth in general. Nor will I 
offend the proprieties by copying the very in- 
different spelling of Fergus Jamiesson, writing 
from Monrovia, — nor explain the great difficul- 
ties of his inland correspondence. Far less will 
1 try to condense within these waning pages 
the full and triumphant statistics compiled by 
the recording and corresponding secretaries, and 
the staffs of assistant correspondents and assist- 
ant recorders of the Detroit central “ Office of 
Registration.’’ Do not we all remember George 
Canning’s words ? “I can prove any thing by 
statistics, — except the truth.” So we will let 
the statistics go, accepting only the results. 

For, about the time I got Dairy mple’s elabo- 
rate letter of his three years’ observation in 
Europe, Jamiesson’s from Monrovia came. Be- 
fore long, there appeared an immense printed 
document from Detroit, and then we wrote to 


96 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


Mary for her Asiatic statistics. Queer enough, 
the old law neld ! In three years, everybody 
who cared for this dissemination, by personal 
love and personal work, of the spirit of an un* 
selfish life, had found some nine, ten, or eleven 
people like himself. The average ran at ten, as 
it had done. And when Pauline, who was now 
a big child, added up all the columns, they came 
out, under this eternal law, 10 7 9 413. “ Ten 
TIMES TEN THOUSAND IS A HUNDRED THOUSAND!” 
That was the one remark which Pauline volun 
teered on the occasion. 


CHAPTER VL 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND 
ND SO my story is well-nigh done. , Not 



because there is no more to tell, but be- 
cause there is so much to tell. Anybody can 
count the seed-leaves on an elm-tree the year it 
starts, but Dr. Gray and Mr. Peirce are the only 
people I ever heard of who computed the leaves 
on the Washington Elm; and the man to whom 
they told the sum forgot whether there were a 
million or ten million, because neither the word 
million nor the words ten million gave him much 
idea or meaning. I could tell you how Harry 
Wadsworth made the first ten what they were, 
but I could only hint of the way the first ten 
helped the first hundred. I could only pick out 
one story of the work of the first hundred, and 
of the first thousand I know I have told you 
nothing. But nothing dies w’hich deserves to 
live. Fifteen years after he was dead, we loved 


98 


TEN TIMEb ONE IS TEN 


him all the same ; and every true word he 
spoke went over the world with all the same 
power, though it did happen to be spoken in 
the language of the Ngambes by a chief of the 
Barotse to a woman of Sesheke. Wildfire does 
not stop of itself; and when a hundred thou- 
sand blades of grass are really on fire, it does not 
stop easily. So the next three years from this 
count of Pauline’s proved. 

Dalrymple had also had to appoint secretaries 
for France, Southern Italy, Northern Italy, and 
the rest. His polyglot was not very good, and 
he said different nations had different ways. So 
it was in Jamiesson’s continent also, Kilimane 
and Sesheke, Ossuan and Jinga, there were 
many languages, many methods, little writing, 
and no mails. But love worked wonders easily 
in that African blood, and Jamiesson had most 
extraordinary stories from traders, and camel- 
drivers, and boatmen, and ivory carriers, and 1 
know not whom. In Asia they got things going 
with their own Asiatic fervor, and they went 
forward with a rush when they were started 
All religions have begun there, and our co-oper 
ation in true life, which was no new religion, 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND. 


99 


but only a little additional vigor with a little 
more simplicity in the old, was at home on the 
old soil. And here in America, I need not tell 
how many forms of organization and of refusal 
to organize, how many statements, platforms^ 
movements, combinations, head centres, middle 
centres, and centre centres, would develop in 
three years. 

What pleased me in it all was this, — that 
nobody, so far as I could find out, got swept 
away with the folly of counting noses. Nobody 
seemed to think he was subduing the world, — 
because he was in a correspondence bureau and 
kept count of those who subdued. I do not 
believe anybody gave more time to the corre- 
spondence than Horace did, — a letter before 
breakfast, and another as he went to bed, — per- 
haps half an hour a day. On the other hand, 
I am perfectly sure that Horace was ten times 
a man, because he was thus thrown into outside 
relations. What does the third “ plank ” say, 
but “ Look out rather than in.” It was near the 
end of these three years that they made an attack 
on us, Horace and Mabel, and insisted that our 
four oldest girls should make them a visit. We 

’.ore. 


100 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN 


said it was nonsense, — but the girls did not 
thinK so, — and after many obstacles set up by 
me, Horace and Mabel and the four girls con- 
quered ; and, trampling over my body, Alice, 
Bertha, Clara, and Pau ine, all sailed for Eng- 
land, went to Norfolk, and made a most lovely 
summer visit there. Horace took them up into 
Scotland, and they tried salmon-fishing there, — 
all of them, Mabel and all, went to the Lakes 
together, and they slopped with their water- 
colors there; but the very best of all was at 
home. That was so homelike, so English, and 
so lovely. I think Mabel’s father, in his heart 
of hearts, thought that these four girls were the 
most extraordinary things which Horace had 
ever sent home from his wanderings; that no 
stuffed kangaroo, or no living emu of his boy- 
hood, equalled these four adventurous living 
specimens. But none the less did he come over 
daily to the house to see what could be done 
that day for their amusement. And Horace’s 
own father, as the girls by one accord declared, 
was “just lovely.” 

Of which visit, let them write the history, — in 
this place only this is to be noted : that except- 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND. 101 


ing when Pauline went bodily into Horace’s 
den, and compelled him to show her Wadsworth 
letters, they hardly saw or heard any thing of 
the secretary’s duties as secretary. What they 
did see was the eager, cheerful life of a consci- 
entious gentleman in the midst of a large ten- 
antry. They saw farms in perfect order ; they 
saw laborers with the lines of promotion open ; 
they went into schools of cheerful, bright, in- 
telligent children, well taught and thriving ; they 
saw all the time that Horace was lifting where 
he stood ; and that by Swaff ham in Norfolk, he 
VJ’as driving out the King Bombas of that region 
quite as effectually as he drove out another 
King Bomba from Calabria. His vocation was 
that of an English land-proprietor, compelling 
deserts to blossom and bear fruit ; his avocation 
was so near to it, that it was hard to discrimi- 
nate. It was the making the men who worked 
on his estates to be more manly, and the lifting 
up their children’s lives ; yes, and without their 
knowing it also, the farmers who only paid him 
rent, and the laborers whom they hired, and their 
children also, were lifted up in the general reno^ 
vation. These were the vocation and the avo- 


102 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


cation. For a little “ Third,” as he called it, — 
a pastime of his dressing-room, — he kept up 
the correspondence with such Englishmen as 
believed in the four cardinal points, and were 
trying to make other people live by therri. 

Norfolk, Norfolk, Norfolk, — always Norfolk, 
with its dear English names, Swaffham and 
Cockley and Aylsham, and I know not where 
not, — are the burden of the girls’ tales of this 
celebrated English visit. But the end of it is 
the part which specially belongs in this history 
of mine ; namely, the expedition they all made to 
Baden-Baden. A queer place, you would have 
said, for Horace and Mabel actually to start for, 
having no other object than to entertain four 
country cousins, — that is, my four girls. But 
you say this because you do not know that the 
Prime Minister, and indeed half the government, 
and the Crown Prince himself, were, at this time, 
all enthusiasts for “ the four cardinal points ” 
named above; and had, long before, painted 
these statements of them, in letters of gold on 
the four sides of the Kursaal, where you, Mr. 
ChipS; remember losing five hundred rouleaux 
the night before you left for home : “ Sursunj 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND. 103 

corda,” “ vorwarts nicht mckwarts,” “ avxovg ov 
aavrov,” and “ lend a hand.” This was the way 
they rendered the four legends, which Detroit 
had been satisfied to print in our vernacular. I 
need not say that the whole gambling business 
was at an end ; but though they were virtuous, 
there were cakes still, and what took the place 
of ale. The government — younger men than 
you and I remember in Baden — were all of them 
enthusiasts, and all of them aesthetic. They 
declared that they would show that Baden-Baden 
without high play could be made more attractive 
than Baden-Baden with it: they ga-ve the four 
“ cardinal points ” for the secrets of the attraction, 
and certainly they succeeded. The drama of 
Weimar was never better than theirs; the out- 
door life of Baden-Baden itself, in its tawdry 
days, was never as luxurious as this was now” , 
the fine art of Munich was more grandiose, but 
not half so lovely as this ; and, what with pretty 
girls, enthusiastic artists, an opera beyond re- 
proach, the perfection of comedy, the most 
agreeable men in Europe and the most attractive 
women, — the people who came there managed 
to live without rouge et noir^ — at least my girls 
did. 


104 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


But they did not go there for mere agreeable 
living. It was, as we know, rather more than 
eighteen years since that meeting of ten of us, 
in the North Colchester station house. It was 
three years since, as I told you, Pauline added 
up her “ hundred thousand ” of the multiples of 
that original ten. And at the end of the eighteen 
years, the Crown Prince had determined to call 
together privately a Conferenz of corresponding 
secretaries ; not, as he said in his circular, for the 
purpose of making any plans, — for, as he sup- 
posed, the great merit of our movement was that 
it never had any plans, — but that the secretaries 
might know each other by sight, and, at least, 
have the satisfaction of shaking hands. “ II 
they did nothing else,” said the Crown Prince, 
“ they could show each other how they kept their 
record-books.” So they assembled, — and for 
four of Horace’s suite I can testify that, as we 
say down East, “ they had an excellent time.” 
But it was the queerest assembly that ever camt 
together in that Kursaal. 

Sailors from the Levantine ports, old long 
robed men from Poland, who looked like Shyloch 
but were very unlike him, cloth-men from thv 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND. 105 


depths of Germany, quiet Spanish scholars from 
the university cities, two quaint-looking ' school- 
masters from Holland, and nice stout men, who, 
Alice is sure, were burgomasters. Then among 
all this white trash, you might see Jamiesson 
himself, great quiet black man, a little over- 
dressed, and his crew of all colors, camel-drivers, 
pottery-men, wool merchants, cadis, and muftis. 
Mary Throop was there, looking in the face, for 
the first time, beys and effendis, with whose 
autographs she had been long acquainted, and 
talking, with smiles and with gestures, to people 
who spoke “ Central Tartary ” and “ Turkey-in- 
Asia,” but of other lingo knew none. All, save a 
herd of black-coated Americans, looked like a 
fancy ball, as Clara said, of a thousand people who 
still moved about as if they had all breakfasted 
together and were entirely confident in each 
other, and were never to part from each other 
again. At the first meeting, two or three hun- 
dred out of the thousand had each his record- 
book under his arm ; and, on the old faded green 
of the tables, left iix memoriam, you would see 
a Spaniard trying to explain to a Pole about 
his totals, his gratifying coincidences, and hia 


106 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


wprises, — holding up his fingers by way ol 
count, and the Pole bowing, and sympathizing, 
and saying, “ Ah! ’’ and “ aussi,” under the im- 
pression that “ aussi ” was Spanish for “ yes.” 
It was very funny to the eye, — for it was the 
Tower of Babel backwards. It was all lan- 
guages and peoples united again under the 
empire of love. 

No ! They would not have any meeting for 
speech-making, lest they should get into the old 
ruts. Only, on the day fixed for the first assem- 
bling, the Crown Prince made one very satisfac- 
tory speech, with occasional quotations of the four 
mottoes, pointing to them, which was cheered 
loudly by those who did not understand it, and 
equally loudly by those that did. Then, instead 
of the usual forlornity of a convention, they all 
fell to talking together, and a charming buzz 
arose. Dark -eyed secretaries from Bulgaria wer« 
seen talking to blonde secretaries with curls from 
the neighborhood of Fort Scott, in Kansas; a 
very business-like secretary from Oshkosh was 
caught talking, behind a door, with a very pretty 
Circassian secretary who had brought her book 
all the way from Himry. The result of a week’s 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND 


107 


rapid talking, with drives, and walks, and con- 
certs, and picnics, was very great mutual conll- 
dence and regard among the secretaries, more, 
as Pauline thought, and as Mabel agreed, than 
if they had all sat on uncomfortable settees eight 
hours a day for a week, and had discussed some 
resolutions that nobody cared a very great deal 
for. Only then there would have been so much 
more to put in the newspapers ! And what is 
life good for, if you cannot put it into the news- 
papers ? 

Meanwhile, the secretary of state was at work 
with a detail of clerks furnished him by the 
home department ; and the different secretaries 
brought in their books to him, and their totals 
were transcribed and added, and put into aU 
sorts of tables, in the most admirable way, so as 
to look quite as dull as, in reality, the miracles 
they described were exciting. And the result of 
the whole was, that in the three last years the 
movement had gained tenfold ! Each indi- 
vidual member seemed, on the average, to have 
brought in ten new members, or so nearly ten, 
that 1 he deaths in three years were made good, 
with nine members more. The grand total 


108 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


increased the 107,413 members of three years 
before to 1,081,729 ! So soon as this was 
proved, a royal salute was fired from the old 
batteries. And, that evening, the court-band 
performed for the first time a magnificent new 
symphony, by the great Rud fiphssen himself, of 
which the theme was Zehn Mai Eim ist ZeJm 
which was received with rapture by all who at 
aU appreciated classical music. I am sorry to 
say some of the Chinese secretaries did not. 
But as there was not room for them to sit down, 
they walked in the gardens in the moonlight. 
Of all which glories Bertha wrote full accounts 
to us, wmding up, in immense letters, with what 
was everybody’s motto and badge at Baden-Ba 
den, — 


TEN TIMES A HUNDRED THOUSAND IS A MILUOM. 


CHAPTER VIL 


THE CONFERENZ AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND. 

SO after a little of Switzerland, and a 
dash at Rome and at Naples, my girls came 
^ome No: no matter what secretaries they 
Had met, that is not part of the story. It had 
certainly been the most curious convention that 
ever was held ; with no speeches except this by 
the Crown Prince, and, instead of Resolutions, 
nothing but a Symphony. A convention which 
ended in a symphony ! Nothing but a symphony ! 
As I heard Kate — who had been to Trinity for 
she knew what — say, bitterly disappointed, tha- 
there was “ nothing but prayers ” there ; — and 
as the pretty Baroness Thompson when she 
returned from her wedding-tour, — when they 
had arrived at Niagara too late for the hops at 
the hotels, — told me that there was nothing at 
Niagara but water! A convention with nothing 
but a symphony ! But not so bad a convention 
after all. 


llu TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 

For it sent all these secretaries home weU 
convinced that there was much more in the 
movement than figures ; and that they and the 
cause they loved were lost if it were shipwrecked 
on statistics; — ^that dear Harry Wadsworth 
himself would be dissatisfied, even in heaven, if 
he thought one of them was getting betrayed 
into preferring a method to the reality. “ Love 
is the whole,” said the Piscataquis Secretary to 
me, as he stopped at No. 9, with some letters 
from the girls ; — and I know he went down to 
his camp of lumbermen more resolved than 
ever to lend a hand, — and some very noble 
things we heard from that lumber camp before 
the next year had gone by. 

But I have forsworn detail. You see we are 
rushing to the end! From this great Conferenz 
the story of the movement is indeed mixed up 
with the larger history of the world. It was 
onl} then that for the first time many in the 
movement, and many out of it, knew that there 
was any movement at all. A stone is thrown 
into the water, but who ever knows where or if 
the sixth circle strikes the meadow-grass on the 
shore ? 


THE CONFERENZ AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND. Ill 


Nor did we hear of any Conferenz or Con- 
vention three years after, till it was too late 
for us. We went on in our quiet way. Life 
was purer and simpler and less annoyed to us, 
because constantly, now, we met with near and 
dear friends whom we had not known a day 
before, and who looked up and not down, looked 
out and not in, looked forward and not back- 
ward, and were ready to lend a hand. Life 
seemed simpler to them, and it is my belief that, 
to all of us, in proportion as we bothered less 
about cultivating ourselves, and were willing to 
spend and be spent for that without us, above 
us, and before us, life became infinite and this 
world became heaven. 

But there was a Conferenz, though we did 
not know of it beforehand ; — without taking 
down the dictionary I cannot tell what they 
•called it It was in one of the South- Sea Isl- 
ands, set a-going by some of George Dutton’s 
Kermadeck people. They could not go to Baden- 
Baden, of course ; and I believe the whole Pacific 
Ocean had had but two representatives there. 
Their canoes could not double Cape Horn, they 
said. But when they heard the accounts of 


112 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


Baden-Baden, they all said that, for all its glories, 
it was still true, — as Mr. Morris had made out, 
— that the earthly paradise was in their own 
beautiful ocean, — Pacific Ocean indeed, if any 
one understood the sublime prophecy in which 
it was named. So the Beche-la-mer people, and 
the seal-fishers, and the Nootka Sounders, and 
the birds’-nest men, and all sorts of Alexander 
Selkirks, and Swiss Families, and Peter Wilkin- 
ses, and Crusoes without a name, — all the 
Tudds and Bishop Selwyns and Pitcairns Isl- 
anders fell to corresponding with each other, and 
organized their own celebration of the seventh 
triennial anniversary of the original club meet- 
ing. It was to be held on Christmas Island, for 
the name was of good omen ; and, as near as 
they could figure, that was near the centre of 
the Pacific, and on the whole equally convenient 
and inconvenient to everybody, — like a well-- 
placed school-house in the school district of a 
country town. Great correspondence they had 
with other secretaries, and great temptations 
they offered of bread-fruit and poe, and cocoa- 
nuts, and bananas, with actually unlimited sup- 
plies of guava jelly, to any who were carnally 


THE CONFERENZ AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND. 113 


minded, if they would come. Great efforts they 
made to get some of the “ original ten,” and 
with such success that the Widow Corcoran 
went, and one of the Tidd boys, and Widdi- 
field, — and great heroes, I can tell you, they 
were too. And in every sort of craft the ocean 
bears did the delegates from different groups 
arrive; from groups with names, and groups 
without them. As by those ocean currents the 
original cocoanuts were borne wafted in their 
husky boats; and every seed and every egg that 
has been needed since for the food of man oi 
beast, — so the delegates or secretaries came 
north, came south, came east, and came west, to 
Christmas Island. And they held high festival 
there for many days. George Dutton was there, 
evidently no day older than he was when in 
California he ran for his life. Widdifield 
met (jollege pupils of his, whom he had not 
seen since he preached in Newark in New Jer- 
stiy. Mrs. Corcoran met some people from the 
Old Country who had been living in Honolulu 
for twenty years ; but on conversation it proved 
that from their old home in Ballykeir they could 
see Stevie’s Mount in the sunrise, which she^ 


1x4 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


Mrs. Corcoran, always saw in the sunset, when, 
as a little girl, she came and went in Ballytul- 
lah ; and, though neither of them had ever gone 
to Stevie’s Mount, by going round the world, 
they had met here on Easter day on Christmas 
Island. Strong representations from Japan were 
there, of those charming, mild-spoken, gentle- 
manly noblemen, and in the ardor of the move- 
ment some of them had ventured to bring their 
sisters and their wives. 

And there, too, they had their symphonies in 
their own kind, — though not after the fashion 
of the court-band of Carlsruhe. Symphonies in 
dancing, symphonies in canoes on still water be- 
hind guardian reefs, symphonies whispered in 
the ear, symphonies spoken in prayer to God by 
great congregations ; — there was no want of 
symphonies, and no want of harmony, though 
there was not a resolution or programme or pre- 
amble printed or voted for, nor so much as a 
(5ornet-a-piston on the whole Island. The secre- 
taries had their books, tappa books and books 
of rice paper, books of cotton, books of seal- 
skin, books from America ruled by Leveridge 
and Stratton’s compound, patent, self-adjusting, 


THE CONPERENZ AT CHRISTMA.S ISLAND. 115 


double combination ruling machine, and long 
rolls of parchment which some Muftis brought 
from beyond Muscat. And speculative secreta- 
ries and calculating secretaries lay for days with 
their books under fronds of giant ferns, twenty 
feet high, — yes, just as lovingly as the fairies 
lie under the maiden’s-hair in the spring pasture, 
— and calculated and copied, subtracted, trans- 
ferred, cancelled, and added. Immense corre- 
spondence they opened from absent secretaries, 
and then calculated more, made more transfers, 
and added more. Then they filed the letters, and 
went off to their dancing, or talking, or story-tell- 
ing. Then the next day they met and calculated 
again, and more boats and ships brought more 
letters. And after two or three weeks the whole 
was put in the proper tables, and the great law, 
“ Ten Times One is Ten,” was verified again. 
In only three years from the Conferenz at Baden- 
Baden it was made certain that the movement 
was represented by at least 10,934,1 27 members. 
There was immense jollification at the announce- 
ment, — a great international feast of two finger 
and three finger poe, with roast-beef, b^che-la- 
mer, birds’ nests, and guava jelly, ad libitum. 


11(5 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


And when all had well feasted, George sent off 
his own lovely clipper yacht, the “ Harry Wads- 
worth,” which had long before taken the place of 
the shattered canoe, with a skipper who cracked 
0 1 day and night to Hawaii, and telegraphed 
to the four continental secretaries only these 
words : “ Ten million nine hundred and thirty- 
four thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven.” 
“ Only these and nothing more.” And the next 
morning, all over the world where there were 
newspapers, in the head line of the “ Personal ” 
in the leading journals of the towns where were 
secretaries, there appeared in full-face italic cap- 
tals these words only, understood by the elect, if 
oy no others : — 

TEN TIMES A MIZIION IS TEN MIILION, 

That was the way in which the Christmas 
Island meeting and its results were hrst an- 
nounced to me and to Polly. We had been at 
No. 9 for four or five months, and by misfor- 
tune all our letters from the Kermadeck Islands 
had gone to D Street in Washington, because 
the Kermadeckers had neglected to put “ South 
Boston ” on them. Then they had been sent 


THE CONFERENZ AT CHRISTMAS ISLAND. 117 


back from the dead-letter office to the Island ; and 
when Dutton got home from the festival, he found 
them there. Perhaps it did not make much dif- 
ference, as I suppose none of us could have 
gone. But we should have been glad to make 
our own decision 


CHAPTEE Vlll. 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 

OO the end comes of course. For when ten 
million people have determined that the 
right thing shall come to pass in this world, — 
having a good God on their side, they will 
always be found to have their own way. For 
reasons I have explained, the history becomes 
more vague. For we have now come to the 
period between 1879 and 1882, and the files of 
newspapers for that period, let us be thankful, 
are comparatively few. It was in the fail of 
1879 that they gathered together under the fern 
leaves on Christmas Island. 

But this ten million despatch gave spirit to all 
parties. And, over all the world, many a man 
and woman who had been talking prose all their 
lives, and doing very commonplace things, began 
to learn the great lessons, — that it is in the long- 
run much better to talk prose than to talk poetry, 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


119 


and that he who does commonplace things well 
may be mastering the world. With the ten 
million despatch, I should say, there came for 
the first time the feeling that even by prose and 
by commonplace the world might be saved. 

And, for three years more, the three years 
between 1879 and 1882, the ten million people, 
each in his own home, were doing just what 
Harry himself did in the beginning. Only they 
had the feeling, now, that something was coming 
to pass which he never dreamed of, nor the Club 
of Ten, nor the Detroit Club. They did not 
put the “ movement into the newspaper ; there 
was no “movement’^ to put in, — more than 
there was when Harry gave the Widow Corco- 
ran her chips in the wood-shed. Still the great 
fact of the existence of the ten million could not 
well be kept out of the newspapers. And with- 
out dwelling on this period, I may just say that 
it was in these three years that the “ movemenV’ 
if it must be called so, went through the neces- 
sary crises of controversy. 

Mr. Agassiz says that every great scientific 
truth goes through three stages. First, people 
say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say 


120 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN* 


it had been discovered before. Lastly^ they say 
they always believed it. Exactly this happened 
with the “ movement.” The first two stages 
came in, in the three years between 1879 and 
1882. 

As soon as the magic words, 

TEN TIMES A. MILLION IS TEN MILLION, 

appeared by direction of the local secretaries in 
the “ Personal ” of the daily newspapers, all the 
religious newspapers began inquiring into theii 
meaning, — and to ask whether there were not 
concealed some profligate attack on the Bible 
The particularly bright religious journals got 
leaders out about it within a fortnight after the 
words appeared, — the others not so soon. This 
delay was not amiss, however. The bright ones 
had all proved thc.t the words were very danger- 
ous, and that a terrible plot against the church 
was concealed in them. This waked up the 
drowsy ones, and they did not like to own that 
they had been asleep. So they all said they did 
not think the words were dangerous; the only 
danger was in the columns of the wakeful journ- 
als. This gave our friends one half the religious 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


121 


press as counsel for the defence ; and as, in truth, 
our whole effort was in the simple line of the most 
unpretending Christianity, whenever any journal 
did try to rip up the constitution of a club, or to 
prove that Harry Wadsworth was a heathen, tho 
effort generally came to grief of its own weight. 
There was a good deal of judicious comment on 
the dangers of secret societies, till it proved that 
none of the ten million people, as they came to 
be called, had formed any secret society. A 
good deal was said about log-rolling and mutual 
admiration societies. But on the whole it proved 
that they had a distaste for politics, and that 
when they were in public life they were men the 
public could not do without. Before many 
months, as it happened, a proposal was made in 
the English Parliament to omit the letter u 
from the spelling of “ honour ” in the English 
Bibles. And then on this question such a con- 
troversy arose in England as swept through the 
religious press of all the world, and this quite 
endeu the “ten million discussion.” Nothing 
more was ever said, so far as I ever heard, about 
the movement being hostile to the Bible. 

But, on the other hand, a good many bright 
fellows, frontier bishops, secretaries of missionary 


122 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


societies, and such like, who were really trying, in 
their own way, to get the world forward if only 
they could find places for their levers, studied the 
bit of mathematics by which in twenty-one years 
seven zeroes had been annexed to the 1 . which 
stood for Harry Wadsworth. They had the wit to 
see that this was much more substantial victory 
than all their tracts had yet won, — or any one 
of their embassies. They saw at the same mo- 
ment that it was precisely the system on which 
all Christian victories have been won, — on 
which the hundred people of the Mayflower cabin 
had become so many millions to-day. Hundreds 
of these men were sharp-sighted enough and 
faithful enough to claim the ten million as their 
own allies ; and at once there were published 
millons of tracts with such titles as — 

“ Henry Wadsworth proved a Sandemanian.’’ 
Published by the Sandemanian Board. Price, 
one cent; one hundred and twenty-five copies 
for one dollar. 

“TEN MILLION WITNESSES to the 
Articles of the Protestant Episcopal Church.” 
Published for gratuitous distribution, with the 
authority of the Rt. Rev. Henry Cairns. Min- 
neapolis, 1880. 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


123 


‘‘ REASONS which make it evident that 
HENRY WADSWORTH was a Unitarian 
Congregational Christian.’’ Tract No. 97. Sixth 
Series. American Unitarian Association} Chi- 
cago, 1881. 

“ Wadsworth a Universalist. A Short Tract, 
by Hiram Ballou. For circulation.” Publishing 
House, New York, 1880. 

“ The Standards Planted. An Affectionate 
Appeal to the Ten Million.” Philadelphia. Pres- 
byterian Union, 1880. 

“ Wesley’s Class System vindicated in Wads- 
worth’s Tens.” Methodist Board. New York, 
1880. 

And even Rome did not neglect an occasion 
so tempting ; but there appeared “ Religious 
Liberty the Method of the Holy Church : an 
Address to those who believe in the Four Detroit 
Mottoes.” Catholic Publication House, New 
York, 1880. 

All of them were eager to make out that the 
four Detroit Epigrams belonged specially to 
their own communions, and that the ten million 
would advance their central purpose by coming 
meekly into their respective organizations. 


124 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


It was true enough that dear Harry had pn»« 
fited by all these people’s books and plans. But 
Porter was all wrong, I am sorry to say, in pre- 
tending that Harry was a Sandemanian. The 
truth was, he was an officer of the Church of 
the Unity in Colchester ; and, as such, he was 
at liberty to get all he could from Pope or from 
Pagan. In that Church, they never asked what 
a man believed, but they expected him to believe 
it with all his might, and no mistake. If he 
believed in Christ enough to come to their com- 
munion table, they never sought an excuse to 
turn him away. 

So these three years sped by, — first, in the 
endeavor to show that the ten million were the 
most irreligious of men and women, which they 
were not ; second, in an attempt from all the foci 
of ecclesiastical order to show that they were 
the most religious of men. To my notion they 
were, — though perhaps not exactly as these sev- 
eral tract-writers supposed. 

Any way, religion or irreligion, the discussion 
did not help much, and did not hinder much, 
though perhaps it did hinder a little. The ten 
million were terribly in earnest, — just as much 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


125 


as the Original Ten were. Indeed, they were 
rather too much in earnest for any large scale 
frodc when the three years were over. I might 
say, rather, that in that summer, the summer of 
1 882 the whole civilized world seemed very 
much changed. Was it that so many men and 
women were caring for others more than them- 
selves, and living for God’s law and not for 
the Devil’s ? Any way, there was not a rail- 
road accident in America or Europe that sum- 
mer ; Congress adjourned after a session of only 
three weeks, and most of the State legislatures 
after a session of only three days. In the pretty 
country jails they were taking summer boarders. 
None of the schools in America had any evening 
lessons. The daily newspapers all had feuilletons 
with continued stories in them, because they 
had neither murders, accidents, nor sensation 
trials. Coal was at half price, because they mined 
by machinery, and the workmen had forgotten 
the mystery of striking. There was not a village 
but had its daily afternoon jollification, with a 
play or dance, or poem a la Morris, or charade, 
or picnic, or concert. And all life seemed such a 
frolic, that nobody cared to go to Baden-Baden oi 


126 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


to Christmas Island, for a Conferenz or a Con 
vention. 

None the less did the local secretaries foot up 
their books, and telegraph the result to Dalryin- 
ple in Norfolk. Dalrymple’s hair was iron-gray 
now, but he stepped with a firm gait, and his 
voice rang out as cheerily as ever. With such 
telegraphs as 1882 worked, his communication 
even with Timbuctoo was easy. Every day he 
received some dozens of despatches from different 
capitals ; and at last, late in October, he got a des 
patch from Irkutsk informing him that an express 
was in from an outlying region of the Chalcha 
land among the Mongols. For this express they 
had been waiting, before they could send in their 
totals. And Dalrymple reverently added the 
figures to the sum of all the other stations which 
he had cast before. That total was 99,998,180 

The Irkutsk despatch gave 24,792 

So the grand total was 100,022,972 

fi.iuls. 

Horace, dear old boy, touched a key of his 
table telegraph, and in five seconds the bells of 
Swaff ham, and Cockley, and Aylsham, and Dere* 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


127 


ham, and Hingham, and Norwich, and for aught 
1 know, of half England, were chiming with 
triple bob-majors and every thing else that would 
express joy. Ten hours of joyful chiming in Nor- 
wich. before they brought the bells home! Hor- 
ace touched another key, and sent his private 
despatch to young Gladstone, who was then in 
his father’s place as First Lord of the Treas 
ury. In five seconds more the Tower guns were 
firing, — nay, in ten seconds an imperial salute 
was firing from every battery in that empire on 
which the sun never sets. Napoleon IV. did 
not get his despatch for five minutes. He was 
riding in the Bois de Boulogne, and the “ repeat’’ 
did not find him. But the Home Minister got 
his, and took the responsibility of ordering +he 
French salutes. So that when Napoleon did 
get the paper, he knew what it was before he 
opened it. 

It was all an affair of seconds over the woild, 
announced at sunset, sunrise, noon, or midnight, 
according to your longitude. Our President 
then was a man you do not know, John Fisher. 
He was an enthusiast. And his arrangements 
for salutes were so perfect that he said there was 


128 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


not a capital city in America but knew the news 
sooner than Napoleon IV. had it. You see they 
had nothing to do, in those days, with the gov- 
ernment stores of nitre and powder, but to burn 
it in jollification. So they burned it. 

And thus it was an old story to most of the 
wor.d when, the next morning, at the head of 
the “Personal ” in the newspaper, men read — 

TF.N TIMES TEN MIEEION IS A HUNDBEU MIEEION 


Dalrymple wrote me a philosophical letter this 
time. He confessed that he had been terribly 
frightened before the Irkutsk despatch came. 
As it was, he said, it was by the skin of our 
teeth we were saved. He bade me remark the 
falling off between 109,341,270, which, as he 
said, should have been the number, at the least, 
and 100,022,972, which it was. “ It is all very 
well for the multitude,” said he, “ to say ‘ ten 
times ten million is a hundred million,’ and that 
is, thank God, one of the eternal truths. But, 
for all that, we have not gained tenfold in these 
three years. We have fallen off badly. So 
piuch for the quarrels of you Dominies. All 


TEN TIMES TEN MILLION. 


129 


the time we were sticking fast on the Great 
Roll, at those ninety-seven millions and ninety- 
eight millions that filled up so slowly, my heart 
was in my throat. I lost my appetite, and could 
not hit a partridge ii 1 tried. 1 tell you a million 
people are a great many. And when that plucky 
Tchitchakoft’s bulletin came in, Fred, I could 
have kissed him. But, for the love of c^eai 
Harry, let us have no more quarrelling arnv'iig 
vou padres ! ” 


CHAPTER IX. 


A THOUSAinD million. 

ND why were all these salutes fired, th^s 



world over? Why was every capital 
illuminated? Why was there a holiday given 
to every school? Half-holidays had been the 
universal daily custom for years before. It was 
simply, you see, that a tenth part of the people 
in the world had shown, in some way worth 
belief, that they meant — 

To look up and not down. 

To look forward and not back, 

To look out and not in, — 
and 

To lend a hand. 

I say one tenth, in round numbers. We did 
not know in 1882 how many people there were 
in the world exactly. But we had subdued some 
estimates, and we had swelled some, and we 
^ conceited ’’ that there were rather more than a 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


131 


thousand million men, women, and children, the 
world over. We had one estimate as high as 
1,228,000,000; and this was, for want of a 
better, taken by the statistical men as the true 
one. It was roughly said that a tenth part of 
these were those little children of whose like is 
the kingdom of heaven, who are not yet pro- 
faned by contact with earth, or who, at all events, 
cannot be pledged to any line of duty. If this 
were so, there were, in round hundreds, one 
thousand one hundred million sentient, sensible, 
and responsible people in the world, say over 
three years old. Now, one tenth of these, as I 
said, were willing to live for the company rather 
than themselves. This willingness started this 
rejoicing. Of course a minority so large as that, 
practically agreeing on a few principles, ruled 
absolutely the larger majority. When but one 
man in thirteen was a Christian in the Roman 
Empire, Constantine found it politic to proclaim 
Christianity. 

But we meant no such flash in the pan aa 
Constantine’s proclamation. We had not seen 
the Club of ten enlarge to the hundred million, 
in less than a generation, to stop there. Indeed, 


132 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


the ten meanest men among those Chalcha peo- 
ple were as much in earnest as any of us of the 
Original Ten, that this world, and nothing less, 
should be put on a few simple principles, such 
as Jesus Christ lived for and died for. No man 
said any thing about this. The quarrels of the 
Dominies had cured us of talk and of new 
methods. Every man and woman understood 
that there was no short cut nor patent process. 
We saw that the thing must spread by contagion 

it spread at all. Still, though no man said 
any thing, I can tell you the interest became 
intense, almost terrible sometimes, as those next 
three years whirled by. 

You see at first these hundred million people 
were very unequally divided. Commerce, adven- 
ture, and all that, had scattered them a great 
deal; but still there were favored points and 
points not favored. There were whole villages, 
where, as far as you could see, almost every man 
held loyal to the Four Mottoes; where you were 
fairly tempted to say that God’s own kingdom 
of love had come, just as you are tempted to 
say that of some Homes you and I know of. 

But these people, if they really meant “ to lend 


A THOUSAND MriJ[.ION. 


13a 


a hand,” could not stay in any such four-square 
Sybaris as that. Indeed they would stifle there, 
for want of vital air, and of exercise. They 
could not say their prayers there, indeed. What 
use in praying “ Thy kingdom come. Thy wiL 
be done on earth as it is done in heaven,” if 
they, the very work-people to whom God had 
intrusted the work of the world, were doing 
nothing about it ? And of course, as they looked 
out and not in, and forward and not backward, 
they did not satisfy themselves with making a 
contribution in church to help send one man in 
a black frock coat and a white neck-cloth to do 
this thing for them. They went themselves, in 
great companies. That was the new school of 
missions which built up the new civilization : 
unless you remember Lord Baltimore, and Win- 
throp, and the Mayflower^ or perhaps go back to 
Isocrates and Herodotus, and say it was the old 
school of missions. A new Sybaris, say better 
a new Nazareth, would plant itself right ir. the 
midst of a horde of Gauchos, with rifles enough 
to make itself respected, — yes, but with dolls 
and rattles enough for the Gaucho babies, bread 
and butter enough for the Gaucho women ii 


J34 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


there were famine, and, in general, love enough 
to tame any Gaucho chief who was not very 
thick-skinned. All over the world you saw such 
clusters of young people going from worn-out 
soils to the virgin soils, or from the new lands to 
the historical: Old and New playing into each 
other’s hands, and, by wonderful combinations, 
taking tricks which had been thought impossible 
before. 

Then you began to see the old line of public 
appeal exactly changed. The advertisement 
became the appeal of generosity instead of the 
plea of selfishness. 


From the New York Herald. 

A MOTHER and her daughter, without encum 
brance, would gladly know where they can be 
use. One of them was in Mrs. Emerson’s school, and 
they have had the advantage of personal acquaintance 
with two of the Original Ten. Address M. and D., 
Herald Office. 

F ive young men, who graduate this summer at 
Cornell, would like to go to any part of the 
world where they are needed. Will bear their own 
expenses. Have heard the lectures of Mr. Widdifield, 
and the brothers Corcoran. 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


135 


A WIDOW with four children will take into her 
family a paralyzed woman, or any blind person. 
Two sons good at lifting invalids. No charge for board 
lodging, or washing. Address Laundress. 

From the New York Observer. 

D istance no objection. Seven families, all the 
members of which are in good health and have 
lived together without quarrelling for seventeen years, 
wiU gladly go together to any outpost. None of them 
ever believed in total depravity. Address the Editor of 
this Journal. 

S EVEN languages ! Four gentlemen with their 
wives, in whose number are good interpreters in 
seven languages, are ready to sail at a moment’s warn- 
ing. No charge or salary. Have met personallv five 
of the Original Ten. Address F. 0. U. R. 

D etroit Club. Eleven members of the Original 
Detroit Club, with their families, wish to corre- 
spond with reference to duty. From an experience of 
twenty-four years, they are sure that they shall arouse 
no animosity among any Christians. Inquire of the 
Editor of the Observer. 

T he graduates of Humboldt College, Iowa, of the 
present Senior Class — three hundred and seven 
in number — offer themselves for duty. Can work their 
way as stokers if necessary. They belong to one hun- 
dred and seven religious sects, and are yet to know their 


136 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


first dissension. If necessary, two hundred and ninety 
four ladies can accorapan}^ them. Address Senior 
Springvale, Humboldt, Iowa. 

And so on, and so on. These are only a few 
out of hundreds. And they are enough to show 
you how the world is really turned round, when 
the people in it, instead of inquiring first about 
what they shall eat and drink, are inquiring first 
how the kingdom of God shall come. 

And, I promise you, with such practical use of 
the machinery of daily life, the kingdom could 
be seen coming. The enlargement of the world, 
or of man’s intercourse in the world, of course 
all the time made the world smaller. The tele- 
graphs, the journeys back and forth to old homes, 
the enlargement of means of life and love, as the 
old war establishments were put down and the 
old taxes forgotten, — all these things brought Irk- 
utsk and North Colchester very near each other ; 
•c nd it no longer seemed strange to find Harry’s 
portrait in a sledge, as you drove across the 
baika^. 

Indeed, I believe that any true history of those 
years would show that the greatest difficulties 
were not among these distant people. For the 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


137 


first time in history, we began to get interesting 
letters from the outposts. You see, these people 
not looking in, but looking out, did not have to 
teU us much of their own headaches or heart- 
acnes or belly-aches, but were able to devote all 
their pen, ink, and paper, to the things that 
they saw, which we at home wanted them to 
describe. They dealt largely with simple people, 
and it sometimes seemed as if their accounts were 
of a “ nation in a day,” as the hymn says ; though 
-eally they caught all their converts with the 
nook, and not in a net. It was not on the out- 
skirts that the last difficulties were found. But 
as every man finds that the hardest knots he has 
to chop through are those which have been wait- 
ing in his own wood-shed while easier work was 
done, so it proved now, that the very hardest 
jobs of all were in some of the home stations, 
in breaking up hard-pan which we had been for 
generations trampling down. 

Just one story of such difficulty, ttnd the 
whole history of victory may be brought to an 
end. 

It was in the spring of the last of those three 
years. Every thing seemed happy, smooth, con- 


138 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN- 


tented, vigorous, and wise. ' Those of us who 
were in the movement — and who indeed was 
not? — could not find man, woman, or talking 
child, this land through, who was not somehow 
or other showing practical sympathy with us». 
? think it was rather as a jollification, than 
to point out any new line of work, that the 
“ Reformed Association of Covenanters of the 
New Lanark Platform ” held their great decennial 
convention at Sherman City. This, you know, 
was one of the most important ecclesiastical 
gatherings that we could have in this country. 
The newspapers had so little else to tell that they 
all had reporters there. Seven hundred clergy and 
fourteen hundred lay delegates were in attend- 
ance. The meeting was held in a Rink, with 
temporary seats, so that every thing seemed to 
promise a happy time. Never did a more plucky 
manly set of fellows bear cross on their 
shoulders than the men I knew who were in 
that convention. By way of doing honor to age 
and experience and learning, old Dr. Philpotts 
had been appointed president, and he was to 
preach the opening sermon. 

Imagine, then, the haggard dismay of aU 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


139 


parties — press, town, delegates, everybody, — 
when the old gentleman gave out his text, “ And 
what concord hath Christ with Belial? ’’ (2 Cor. 
V. 15), and proceeded, in the most systematic 
way, to “ pitch in ” to the four Detroit mottoes! 
First, he should show that it was impossible f'jr 
a regenerate man to look up, and that his duty 
was to look down. “ Why stand ye gazing up 
into heaven?” (Acts i. 11.) Second, he should 
show that every regenerate man must look back- 
ward rather than forward. “ Remember the days 
of darkness.” (Eccl. xi. 8.) Third, he should 
show that every regenerate man must commune 
first with his own soul. “ While I was musing, 
the fire burned.” (Ps. xxxix. 3.) Fourth, and 
lastly, that all the dangers at which he had 
hinted were slight indeed compared with that 
Covenant of Works, in which men were tempted 
to suppose that they could advance or hinder 
the Creator’s plans. “ A fox shall break down 
their stone wall.” (Nehemiah iv. 3.) If you live 
to 1885, you will perhaps fall in with this cele« 
brated sermon in print. I spare you the detail, 
therefore. About the close there was no “ if. ” 

“ You have observed, my friends, that I have 


140 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


considered the fittest subject of our meditations 
on this occasion to be a series of fascinating 
errors, which have led astray a few giddy young 
men, in the thought or hope that they had found 
out a better gospel ! Let us all hope that these 
straws of human harvesting may be blown away 
even as chaff by the wind of the Infinite Spirit. 
For myself, as the representative of this august 
assembly, — though these were to be my last 
words, — looking round upon the sacrilegious 
mottoes which deform and deface the Hall in 
which we are assembled, I declare that I will 
never accept them as principles of conduct — 
never, never, never!” And with this outburst 
he sat down. 

In fact, when Vittermayer had painted the 
Rink in real fresco, he had wrought in the four 
mottoes on the four walls. By this time they 
were so universal that you saw them every- 
where. 

People were aghast ! There was not a human 
Deing in the assembly, except the good old Doc- 
tor, who was not up to his eyes in the determi- 
nation that this world should be made a worK 
of Faith, Hope, and Love. So indeed was he 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


141 


But he had found it necessary to make his indi- 
vidual and loyal protest against the way things 
were going on, because they were rather different 
from the way he supposed they went on in the 
Covenanters’ time. There was a horrid hush for 
a moment, and then Wilderspin stepped for- 
ward and gave out, — 

“ Had I the tongues of Greeks and Jews,” 
to be sung by the congregation. They sung it 
with a will, and blew off steam a little so. Wil- 
derspin invoked a benediction, and they went 
sadly home. 

Then began synods, and committees, and 
every sort of mutual conference, to make the olt. 
Doctor back down. “ Think how it will sound 
among those nice Bamangwato people,” said my 
Pauline; and everybody had some like feeling. 
But the old man was flint. They got him, at 
last, to say in a letter, that, in a modified sense, 
a Christian might look up to God without step- 
ping off the platform of the Reformed Covenant- 
ers, which was the great object with him, — 
then that he might forget himself, without dan- 
gerous sin, — and that he even ought to lock 
forward to a happier future ; but, as to “ lending 


142 


lEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


a hand,’’ never ! cried the old man. “ It is a 
Covenant of Works, and union with the Devil.” 

So sadly came the October in which we 
had hoped so much. All the other secretaries 
reported a world subdued by Love. In all the 
other continents men had found some way to 
express '‘his Love, and the Faith and Hope 
which were intertwined with it. All princes 
and all people were hoping and praying that, as 
October passed away, one joyful signal the 
world over might show that the horrors of old 
nistory were sealed in one tomb, and that in one 
unanimous heart-beat a world of self-forgetting 
men would begin to live as one hearty family of 
God! But here was one man, who with the 
noblest motive cried out, “ Never, never, never!” 
Whatever else might happen, he would never 
say he would “ lend a hand.” 

The thirty-first day of October dawned. I 
will confess that it was a sad day. Newman 
wrote me that to him it was a bitter morning. 
He had been all the evening before discussing 
the Monophysite heresy with Dr. Philpotts. “ I 
had forgotten the hated names for years,” wrote 
Door Newman ; and so he had led round to the 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


143 


oeauty of Unity among Brethrenj to which 
the old man had assented sweetly ; and then 
Newman had asked, timidly, if, with a change 
of the language, he could not bring his heart 
to agree to “ do good as he had opportunity ’’ ? 
“Covenant of Works!” said the old Trojan, 
“ Never, never, never ! ” So Newman went home, 
and so waked sadly. A sad breakfast. None 
of them could get to work. And Newman wrote 
me that he thanked God even when he heard 
the fire-alarm strike, because it was an excuse 
for him to leave his study. 

But when he came to the district, he bitterly 
lued that selfish thought. The fire was a sud- 
den and bad one. It was already checked below, 
but smoke was pouring up and out of the attic 
windows of the warehouse or factory where it 
had been burning. It proved to be a factory of 
paper-boxes, and the pasting women in the attics 
had been stifling from the smoke. They lay 
out on the steep roof, with their feet stayed in 
the glitters, when Newman came there. George 
Davis and Lawrence Flaherty were moving 
heaven and earth to bring their ladders to the 
eaves, — and did so; but no man could stand 


144 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


the smoke, as he ran up, — far less did those 
poor girls dare to risk it, coming down. New’- 
man told me he saw five fellows in succes- 
sion dash up Flaherty’s ladder, waver, and lose 
their heads, and drop senseless into the arms of 
the crowd below. At last flames began to break 
out of the fourth-story window, and to lap and 
lick up the outside of the building. Three min- 
utes, and the whole would be over, — when a 
tail-man, in his shirt-sleeves, ran boldly down 
the slope of the roof of the church next the fac- 
tory; by an easy spring jumped across the five- 
feet chasm between the buildings, walked like a 
cat to the dormer behind which these five girls 
were crouching ; and then could be seen leading 
them, lifting them, encouraging ; and then actu- 
ally carrying one along the giddy gutter-edge, 
till he had led them all to the more sheltered 
side upon which he had sprung. Davis had 
caught the idea already ; and, by the time that 
last faint child was on that side, Davis himself 
war at his ladder’s top to take her. One two, 
three, — all five passed down, — and then Shirt- 
sleeves, as the crowed called him, sprang back 
across the gulf to the church-roof; and running up 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


145 


the slates to the tower, slipped in, and disappeared 
The whole throng was cheering and yelling. 
The girls were taken, I know not how, — and 
tended, I know not by whom. Everybody but 
Davis and Flaherty seemed to forget the fire ; 
and Newman found himself (as I suppose every 
one did) asking who Shirt-sleeves was, and 
where he had gone. The general impression 
was, seeing he had come down from the steeple, 
that he was an angel in shirt-sleeves. Talk grew 
loud at the church-door, which proved to be 
locked. At last the fussy, lazy sexton appeared 
on the steps, trying, by his air, to make people 
think that he was virtually the hero of the occa- 
sion, though he had not happened to do that 
particular deed. “ Hannay,” cried Newman, “ is 
that you ? who was the man, — where is he ? ” 

“ Locked up in his study,” said Hannay, 
** sees no one till office-hour.” 

“Study?” cried Newman. “Who do you 
gay it is ? ” 

“ Why, don’t you know ? ” says Hannay. 
“ Guess you don’t see him in his shirt-sleeves 
as often as I do. He saws all the wood for the 
furnace fires. Why, it is the old Doctor’" 

10 


146 


TEN TIMES ONE TS TEN. 


Newman turned to the crowd, waved his hand, 
and cried, “ Three times three for Dr. Philpotts! ” 
And did they not cheer v 2 II ? 

Yes: the 'stanch old theologian, who would 
have died before he would accept a “ Covenant 
of Works,” had risked his life, without one anx- 
ious thought, for those five girls. “ A trick 1 
learned when I was unregenerate,” he said after- 
wards, “ I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 
and had some duties to discharge in taking the 
tongue out from the chapel bell.” 

. And the Sherman City papers stopped the 
press, and put in EXTRAS, to announce ‘‘ Gal- 
lantry of Dr. Philpotts I ” “ Dr. Philpotts lends a 

hand I And the local secretary telegraphed to 
the Middle States Secretary, and he telegraphed 
to the Central Union Secretary, and he tele- 
graphed to Dalrymple, — 

“ Dr. Philpo ts has lent a hand! ” 

And this was all anybody was waiting for. 
And before noon of that day, the Brothers in 
Unity at Fort Grant were firing a salute from 
the two cannon left for that purpose; so that 
when the Doctor’s study was open at his office- 
hour, he and all men knew that the whole world 


A THOUSAND MILLION. 


.47 


was One. The old gentleman was overwhelmed 
with visitors. He received their congratulations 
and thanks cordially ; but he said, “ I have not 
acceded, and I never will accede, to a Covenant 
of Works.’^ 

That day the whole world held festival. AU 
schools were dismissed, all banks and work- 
shops and factories closed, — all “unnecessary 
labor suspended,’’ — as the great salutes and 
the great chimes came booming out, which 
announced the agreement of a world of self- 
forgetting men. That day do I say ? Every 
day from that day was festival, century after 
century. So soon as the world once learned the 
infinite blessing of Active Love, and stayed it 
by Faith, and enjoyed it in Hope, there was 
no danger that the world should unlearn that 
lesson. 

That lesson — if this vision of a possibility 
prove true — comes to the world by no change 
of law, by no new revelation, nor other gospel 
than the world has now. It comes simply as 
men after man, and woman after woman, lead 
such unselfish lives as all of us see sometimes, 


. 148 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. 


as all would be glad to live, as dear Harry 
Wadsworth led while his short life went on. 

Nine triads of years were enough each to add 
a zero to the figure which stood for that one 
man. 

Ten times one was ten, 10 X 1 = 10. There 
was one zero. 

But as the nine zeroes were added, in twenty- 
seven years the 1. became 1,000,000,000 — 

GIVE THOU!$AIVD M1L.L.10N. 

This proved to be the number of the Happt 
World ! 


SECOND PAKT. 


HARRY 


WADSWORTH AND 


WADSWORTH CLUBS. 



HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADS- 
WORTH CLUBS. 


J^ARRY WADSWORTH, of whom some 
anecdotes are told in the first part of this 
book, is described in a faithful effort to rep- 
resent, to those who did not know him. Feed- 
eric William Geeenleaf, who died at an 
early age, but after he had attracted to himself 
a circle of real friends, much larger than is de- 
scribed here around Harry Wadsworth. 

Frederic William Greenleaf was born in Wil- 
liamsburg, in Maine. He died in Boston, Mas- 
sachusetts. At the age of twenty-one he left 
Williamsburg for Bangor ; and I think he once 
told me that he served as a fireman on the first 
locomotive that ran from Bangor to Old Town. 
But he took such work as this, only because 
he chose to do something rather than nothing. 
He was well educated, with an inherited gift 


152 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


for engineering and the mathematics, which 
naturally brought him into connection with the 
newly created railroad interests of New Eng- 
land.^ He was soon after engaged on the Bos- 
ton & Worcester Railroad as a clerk in the 
freighting department. I remember he used to 
say, that with his own hands he switched off, 
upon the Western Railway at Worcester, the 
first car of freight which passed westward upon 
it, — one four-wheeled car, which was the pre- 
cursor of the countless miles of freight-trains 
which now pass over that highway. When I 
first knew him, he w^as at the head of the 
freight department in Worcester. 

He passed through different lines of promo- 
tion, and before he died had held important 
positions in the service of different railway lines 
in the United States. His constitution was 
delicate ; and he died in consumption, in the 
year 1851, when he was but little more than 
thirty years of age. 

Careless people speak as if such a life were 

1 His father was Moses Greenleaf, the geographer of Maine. 
His uncle was Professor Simon Greenleaf, of the Dane Law 
School of Harvard University. He had Huguenot blood, and 
was glad of it. 


HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 153 


cut off untimely, and as if its work were ended. 
Because I loved him, I could not but see that 
his power over those who loved him did not die. 
In different places, from different people, 1 heard 
him spoken of almost as a present friend might 
be spoken of ; and what he said or what he ad- 
vised was still held as a central and important 
direction. Now it was a doctor of divinity ; 
now it was the laborer in an iron-mine ; now it 
was the mayor of a city explaining to me his 
administration ; now it was a sensitive friend 
whom Frederic Greenleaf had saved from ago- 
nies of morbid introspection, — who cited to me 
this young master of a freight-house, no longer 
living in this mortal life, as one of the authori- 
ties to be most respected. His body was buried ; 
but in parts of the land, widely parted from each 
other, he was still a guide, and a helpful guide, 
in men’s and women’s lives. 

He was born May 21, 1820 ; he died July 28, 
1850. 

The book in the hands of the reader grew 
from the power of his life, some twenty years 
after his death. It happened that in preaching 
in the South Congregational Church, I made 


154 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


reference to his life, then finished for earth. 
I spoke of the traces I had found of him, in 
fond memories and in active duty, long after 
his death ; and I asked the young people who 
heard me to estimate the growth of such power. 
If ten people who loved him, carried such a stim- 
ulus as he gave, each to ten others, and if they 
did the same, the world would grow brighter. 
I said : — 

“I once told Dr. Wayland, the President of 
Brown University, the story 1 have told you. I 
told him that I could easily write out the spirit- 
ual biography of eight or ten persons who would 
tell us, in their different lines of life, of the in- 
finite blessing they had derived from their inter- 
course with that manly, cheerful, energetic, and 
faithful man. I told him that I had been tempted 
to go farther, and to imagine the after progress 
which might come, if each of those ten went 
and did likewise, — if then, at some meeting of 
their friends, the whole circle of grateful com- 
panions, quickened and enlivened through the 
spiritual interest of such a life, should make 
themselves into a Christian order, bound every 
one of them, every one of the hundreds, to enlist 


HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 155 


ten others in the Life Divine. I told him that 
here was the plan for a Christian Romance : the 
thousand thus quickened, in their turn, would 
be shown to give new life to ten thousand, and 
so to a million. And it would not, in such mul- 
tiplication, require many years to lift this whole 
world from the material grovelling of its infancy, 
to the true spiritual life of men who walk with 
God.” 

This reference to Frederic Greenleaf arrested 
the attention of a young gentleman, then and 
now a near and dear friend of mine. From time 
to time he urged me to carry out the plan of 
writing out the parable in which this prin- 
ciple of diffusion by tens should be thus illus- 
trated. 

In the end of the year 1869 I attempted this ; 
and the first part of this book was then pub- 
lished in six consecutive numbers in the mag- 
azine called “ Old and New.” As the four 
mottoes introduced into it — as the statement, 
in nineteenth-century language, of the three 
words. Faith, Hope, and Love — have now be- 
come the mottoes of a large number of clubs, 
which have taken Harry Wadsworth’s name, 


156 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


the members of those clubs may be interested 
to see the earliest use of those mottoes. 

In the same winter in which I was writing 
this story, I was delivering, at the Lowell In- 
stitute in Boston, a course of lectures on the 
“ Divine Order of Human Life.” Of these 
lectures the eighth, ninth, and tenth were, 
Faith, Hope, and Love, and in the lecture 
on Hope, which has more than one reference 
to Frederic Greenleaf, intelligible to me though 
to no one else, — references to his single and 
simple habit of speaking here as a being living 
in eternity, — I used for the first time these 
words which have now become the mottoes of 
the Wadsworth Clubs. 

There were ten of us much at work together 
in that winter. We were publishing a new 
magazine, with much hope and with much 
hard work. We were allied in the work of 
a large church, which had, I need not say, 
large relations among the poor. We have since 
come to call ourselves one Ten in the Wads- 
worth system. Central among the Ten was 
Caroline Letitia Tallant, who has since 
died. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


157 


A little story which I wrote after her death, 
with some of the memories of her life, belongs 
here. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


CHAPTER I. 

GIVING A DAY. 

T MEAN to call her Irene, because Irene 
means Peace. 

You might call her Letitia, because Letitia 
means Joy. 

Or you might call her Caroline, because 
Caroline means some one who is not very large 
but is very dear. 

Or you might call her Speranza, because 
that means Hope. Or Charis ; Charis is a 
pretty name, and means Divine Love. 

But I shall call her Irene, because that 
means Peace. 

She had arranged for all her Christmas pres- 
ents. Some of them she had arranged last 


158 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


summer when she was away, — off in the edge 
of the mountains. She was not apt to be flur- 
ried or worried ; and so, when St. Victoria’s 
Day closed, all her regular Christmas presents 
were bought or made, and put up in silver 
paper and labelled. “ Silver paper,” dear 
Fanchon, is the old-fashioned name for tissue 
paper. Irene liked to make her presents 
with her own hands. “ When I have manu- 
factured my present,” said she, “ I feel as if I 
gave a piece of myself to my friend.” 

St. Victoria’s Day, as you did not know, 
Dick, is the second day before Christmas. I 
am glad you did not interrupt. If you do 
not interrupt, all will be made clear in time. 

So the last day before Christmas broke bright 
on Irene, and it was a holiday at the school she 
kept, so that she need not go there ; and while 
all the rest of us were hurrying round madly 
in a wild frenzy, — losing our lists of presents, 
and buying by mistake three for grandmother 
and none for grandfather, — ^jhe was at peace at 
breakfast, and at peace after breakfast to write 
a very jolly Christmas letter to Amelia, and 
at peace when Walter and Fergus and Mat- 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


159 


thew and Lothian fitted off for their skating- 
party. She saw they had their mittens and 
their scarfs, and stood on the piazza, as they 
went off, and looked out on the faultlessly 
clear sky. 

“ I mean to give the day to somebody for 
a Christmas present,” said Irene to herself. “ I 
do not know who it will be to ; but let us see 
what will come of it.” So she dressed herself 
for walking, and started. As she arrayed her- 
self, she put her blunt scissors in her pocket; 
and when she started she took a roll of paper. 
She put street-car tickets in her pocket, but 
never scrip nor purse did she take ; and as for 
staves, she had not even one. She was not 
going to give money from the purse, — no, nor 
food from the scrip. “It is the day I will 
give,” said she, — aloud this time, — “or what 
there is left of it.” And she put down the 
latch, left the house empty, and started. 

If the people wished to ring that door-bell 
that day, why, they might ring, — that was 
all! There was nobody it would hurt, within. 
But I think some people like to ring door-bells 
for the love of it. So they were happy that day. 


160 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


Now you must know that Irene was a per- 
son around whom romances were as sure to 
gather as ever they did around Amadis of Gaul, 
or Darioleta, or Blanchefleur, or Huon of Bour- 
deaux. ^ She never sat in a street-car, but the 
woman next her told her her whole story ; and 
she could not give a tramp a cup of coffee, but 
he told her such a tragedy, or comedy, of the 
earlier adventures of his life, as would make 
five good acts on any stage in the world. Ac- 
cordingly, so soon as the car was well under 
way, and she had taken her first look at its 
picture-gallery, — as soon as she had compared 
the face of the hatchet-faced man against the 
vinegar-faced woman’s, the moon-faced girl’s 
against the spoony boy’s, — Mrs. McGoffin, 
who, as was pre-ordained, sat next to Irene, 
moved up to her, and said, in one breath : — 

“ Lady did ye chance to know any one who 
wanted to hire a good square room three-story 
front with open fireplace ’n though I say it 
who should not there ’s not a nicer ’n a neater 
’n a sweeter room in the South Cove. It ’s 
number ninety-nine Needy Street, lady.” 

Irene was interested at once, liked Mrs. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


161 


McGoffin’s way ; was not sorry to have the 
chance of getting round the department of 
Wants in the newspaper, wliere much of her 
charity-money went ; and felt tliat this was 
indeed a “ more excellent way,” if it had only 
happened that Mrs. McGoffin had addressed a 
person needing a room, by the intervention of 
some helpful demiurge. Rapidly in her mind 
Irene ran over the list of her most needy pro- 
tected ones, for Irene was the lady-protector 
of what the ungodly would call a ragged regi- 
ment ; but there was no one of that host whom 
even her kindness would remove to Mrs. 
McGoffin’s third-floor front. All she could do 
was to take out her tablets and make sure 
of No. 99 Oneida Street. She had learned 
this invaluable lesson from Mr. Woodward, 
the champion carer for poor people : to write 
down all you can learn of everybody, from 
the Pope on his throne down to Smoky Pipe 
in his wigwam, and index carefully if you ever 
mean to serve them. How many chances in 
life are lost because people have forgotten, or 
have not indexed well! 

So she said to Mrs. McGoffin that she must 
11 


162 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


keep up a good heart, that perhaps something 
would open ; and Mrs. McGoffin returned by 
giving her her blessing, such as it was ; and 
then Irene stopped the car, and found herself 
in Concord Street. By this time she was quite 
resolved to take a companion. “Two by two 
is the rule,” she said, “and I was wrong to 
think of breaking it.” To tell the truth, she 
was mortal, and she had felt within herself tliat 
there would be many comforts in being alone ; 
but Mrs. McGoffin, or I know not what, had 
put her on another mood than that of lonely 
comfort, and so she turned into D unrobin Court, 
and rang at the attic-room bell in No. 7 ; and 
Rudolf himself came down to answer the bell. 
And his great heavy face beamed when he saw 
Irene. And she spoke to him rather slowly, 
and asked him if he did not want to take a 
walk with her. 

Take a walk with her! If an angel from 
heaven had asked him to take a fly, he would 
not have been so happy. He might have been 
mortally afraid of an angel, or of flying, — I 
am afraid I should be, — but he knew he could 
walk, and he was not afraid of Irene. I never 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY, 


163 


heard of anybody who was, unless it were a 
detected tramp, who had squandered his order 
for sugar at a liquor-shop, and had not re- 
ported to shovel the snow from the sidewalks, 
as he had said he would. Common people, 
middling sort of people, like you and me, were 
never afraid of Irene. “Could he go to walk?” 
That he could. His father was at home, be- 
cause the election was over, and so all the men 
in the street department were dismissed, their 
votes not being needed till next December. 
So his father could sit, and see that the old 
grandmother did not tumble into the fire, and 
Rudolf was free to go and walk with the 
angel. She bade him be quick, and he was 
quick ; and they went now directly to the City 
Hospital. 

The boy jabbered, now broken English, and 
now very fiuent German ; and Irene spoke, 
now in very broken German, and then in very 
careful English. He had a deal to tell her 
about his grandmother and his father, and a 
Christmas letter that had come from Blanken- 
heim in Baden. Some people think Rudolf is 
underwitted ; I believe they thought so at . 


164 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


school, where he was kept, a great big lout, 
in the highest class of the primary, with little 
chits half his size. I don’t think so: I think 
his heart is a good deal bigger even than his 
great big head, and that he is of very slow 
development. That is a kind which the pri- 
mary school does not like, but I believe the 
Good Father and all good angels like them as 
much as any. So he chattered away ; and 
Irene made herself as young as he, and chat- 
tered too. And so they came to the porter’s 
lodge of the hospital. 

I do not know if it was visitors’ day. It 
made no difference, they all knew Irene ; and 
she smiled pleasantly, and nodded, and passed 
right through, just as if she were a doctor. 
And so she led the wondering Rudolf, now 
along the curved path between the winter-girt 
shrubs, then up the splendid steps, then left 
and then right, and then straight and then 
crooked, and then up two flights, till they came 
to the children’s ward on the surgical side. 
Irene had hit on these children flrst, as those 
to whom she would give her Christmas pres- 
ent of that day. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


165 


And the nurses were glad to see her. And 
up came, on the instant, a little tot, — oh, not 
six years old! with one arm tied to her side, 
not very well balanced as she walked, — and 
took her right hand from her mouth to give 
it to Irene, and was in her lap as soon as Irene 
was seated on the bed. Here was one old 
friend. “And who else is here?” asked Irene. 
And so Bridget had to point out, rather dumbly, 
the boy in bed, with both feet crushed ; the 
little girl who had fallen down the cellar-stairs, 
and had broken her leg ; the little boy whose 
face had been cut open by a brickbat ; and the 
girl whose apron had taken fire, and whose 
arms were burned so badly. And of course 
there was John, — John was always there. 

“Well,” said Irene, “I think I must make 
the boys some horses and dogs ; and I will 
make you a pig and a goat; and you must 
show this little girl how to cut out boys and 
girls. I think Miss Anderson will lend us 
some more scissors. And, Rudolf, suppose 
you read them Cinderella; for here is Cinder- 
ella in my pocket.” 

And so it was. They took station at the 


166 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


foot of the beds of the two who could not 
walk. They put rests under their backs, so 
that they could use their hands, and Miss An- 
derson provided chairs for all who could sit ; 
and three pairs of scissors appeared for all 
who could cut, and a bed-table appeared on 
each bed ; and then whole armies of blue horses 
and red horses, yellow cows and green cows, 
purple boys and orange girls, white, gray, and 
black goats and cats and pigs, began marching 
to and fro on the tables at the soft or stronger 
breath of the delighted children. And Rudolf, 
in a higher chair, read, and read very well, 
of mice changed into horses, and lizards into 
footmen. If anybody knew or cared what 
lizards were, or what footmen were ! Nobody 
knew, nobody cared, and nobody asked ; and 
none the less cheerily did the reading go on. 
And for an hour these five children, who had 
been restless and tired and blue all the morn- 
ing, were happier than kings, all because Irene 
had come in. And, though Irene went away 
then, they were very jolly all the afternoon. 
For Irene lent Bridget her scissors, and she 
left all those sheets of colored paper ; and 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


167 


she told Rudolf that he might leave the book 
with the tall boy on crutches who had con- 
descended to hobble down to the gathering. 
So the children had Bluebeard and Aladdin 
and the rest, and made armies of four-legged 
people and two-legged people, and people of 
many legs, before the day was done. 

Why Irene went away so soon was this: 
There came up stairs, from one of the lower 
wards, a man who looked pale through all the 
olive of his face, with coarse Indian hair, rather 
under-sized, but still with- a firm military walk, 
which you would notice even in our nation 
of soldiers. He, too, had had a broken arm, 
but to-day he was discharged as cured. 

The man was a Russian. His accident had 
befallen him on shipboard ; he had been brought 
direct to the hospital, and he knew never a 
man nor a place in the town. Poor fellow ! 
he could n’t speak ten words of English. The 
doctors had spoken to him in German, in which 
he could just make himself understood ; and 
now he had come up to Miss Anderson, be- 
cause she could speak a little German, to know 
where, in the great foiiornity of a strange city. 


168 HARUY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


he should pack himself away. Of course Miss 
Anderson beckoned to Irene ; people always 
beckoned to Irene when things were limping. 
Her German was no better than the Tartar’s. 
And I have always observed that in speaking 
a language two halves do not make one whole. 
But, among them, they understood that the 
man wanted to know where he was to live 
cheaply and simply till he found his place. 
God knew what that place was to be, but cer- 
tainly nobody else did. This was Irene’s 
thought. And then, in all that followed, about 
his chest, and his wages, and the captain, and 
the ship, and the consul and the vice-consul, 
Iiene’s German and Miss Anderson’s German, 
born of Goethe and bred by Schiller, broke 
wholly down ; for there is nothing about sea- 
men’s chests in Wallenstein, and nothing about 
vice-consuls in the Morphologie. 

Then it was that Rudolf came to the front. 
Now it appeared for what purpose in this world 
he was foreordained. The Russian made him 
understand, and he made Irene understand ; 
and so they bade the children good-by. And 
Irene, who from the first had determined that 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


169 


Mrs. McGoffin's spare room was foreordained for 
the Russian, was under way again with him and 
with Rudolf, for No. 99 “ Needy ” Street. By 
this time Rudolf was chattering with the North- 
ern bear, and Irene had her thoughts for her 
companions, after they had crossed to Shawm ut 
Avenue and had taken seats in the car. This 
time tlie portrait gallery was hung with quite 
another set of faces. There was a tender 
foreign-faced woman in a seal-skin sack, talk- 
ing eagerly to Mr. Brooks Phillips. Of course 
everybody in Boston knew him. On the other 
side another lady sometimes interrupted and 
sometimes suggested. “ Perhaps they are going 
to a Christmas-tree,” said Irene to herself, “ and 
perhaps again they are going to the celebration 
of Adam and Eve to-day.” For be it known 
to you, Dick, who are so rusty in your calen- 
dar, that the day before Chiistmas is Adam 
and Eve’s Day. Beyond them, stringing along 
upon' the seat, were five Roxbury Latin School- 
boj's, as the legends on their caps made sure. 
Their knees were piled with baskets and white- 
paper parcels. It was clear enough where 
they were going. Dover Street disturbed the 


170 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


party a little, and some people going to the 
Asylum disturbed it more. And when Irene 
herself rose with her party at Castle Street, she 
saw in the straw, for the first time, a dainty 
pink package which she had last seen in the lap 
of one of Mr. Phillips’s friends. That lady had 
left already. Irene considered a moment. “ No,” 
said she to herself, “ I will not give it to the 
conductor ; that will be too late for Christmas. 
I can find her somehow in time.” So she 
stopped at Mr. Prescott’s, and left a wood' 
order with him, and then they came back to 
Oneida Street. 

Feodor Ivanovitch was taken up to Mrs. Mc- 
Goffin’s. With due dumb show, with an oration 
in Russian by him, very loud and very slow, 
with an oration in Irish by her, very loud and 
very fast, by the payment in advance of a 
dollar and a quarter on his part, and due me- 
diation on the part of Rudolf and Irene, a 
mutual unwritten covenant was made. 

Then the Russian bear had to start upon his 
travels in search of the chest and the vice-con- 
sul, the shipmaster and the consul. Irene bade 
Rudolf take him in tow, wrote for them at the 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


171 


corner store some necessary addresses, made 
Rudolf explain to the other that he must give 
him the money for car-tickets, and saw them 
well away. “ Two by two,” she said, “ that is 
the rule.” 


CHAPTER II. 

LOST AND FOUND. 

by two,” she said aloud, as the car 
swept away with them, “ that is the 
rule.” Nor did she hesitate this time, more 
than before, as to her companion. In very 
few minutes, quicker than you think possible, 
Araminta, Jeannie Fraser was invited, had ac- 
cepted, had girt herself in her best, and was 
on the sidewalk with Irene. She was a nice, 
blooming Scotch lassie of fourteen, glad indeed 
of the emancipation which Irene’s genius had 
organized and made possible for her. And she 
had a thousand questions to ask and a thousand 
to answer, as they worked their way across the 
Common and Public Garden, to find the Hotel 
Bonheur, and Mr. Brooks Phillips. 


172 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


Irene knew by this time what a responsibility 
she had taken in keeping the pink parcel. For, 
if Mr. Phillips had not gone directly home, she 
could not find out where the owner lived. 
Then, where was all her fine theory that she 
should be more prompt than the conductor? 
But Irene was not afraid. “ Fortune favors the 
brave,” she said to Jeannie, to whom she ex- 
pounded the object of this expedition. 

Another terror, deep in Irene’s heart, she did 
not even lisp to Jeannie. How if Mr. Phillips, 
talking so pleasantly to the right and left, did 
not know who either of the seal-skin-coat ladies 
were? How if they had presumed on the cer- 
tain memory of a great public man, and had 
given him no chance to say to either, “ Madam, 
I do not know you from Celestina or from Boa- 
dicea?” Then where would her pink parcel 
go ? This terror she did not lisp of. She only 
said aloud, ‘‘Fortune favors the brave.” 

And Fortune did fiivor her. Mr. Phillips was 
at home, and was all interested. He knew both 
the ladies, and knew that both of them were 
going home. They had all three been together 
at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Prcn 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


178 


viding Occupation for the Higher Classes. He 
did not know which lady had the pink parcel ; 
hut in a minute he wrote down both addresses, 
and Irene and Jeannie could start on their wind- 
ing way. But in that minute he had taken her 
measure as one of the people worth knowing in 
the world ; and she had had the vigor and com- 
fort that there always is when one strong and 
sensible person talks for sixty seconds with 
another. 

So she walked quickly up the Beacon Street 
Mall, climbed the steps, sent in her card to Mrs. 
Donne, and was instantly ushered in, — Jean- 
nie timidly following, because she did not know 
where she should stay, — into one of those grand, 
large, old-fashioned parlors, which look out on 
the Common, and, when there was a Back Bay, 
looked across to the Blue Hills. The Bay is 
gone, but the Blue Hills remain ; and just in the 
sunlight of that lovely afternoon the cheerful 
view of winter made one forget that winter 
could ever seem dreary. 

On a long lounging-chair, in the great, cheer- 
ful bow-front, lay a pale, tall man, with the 
“ Rundschau ” in his hand. Irene noticed it, 


174 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


in the moment while Mrs. Donne stepped for- 
ward to greet her. She told her errand in the 
next moment, though she knew, before she 
spoke, that the parcel was not Mrs. Donne’s. 
She was not the one ; and so that lady said. 
It must have been Mrs. Herbert’s parcel, though 
Mis. Donne had not noticed it in her hand. 

“ She is not far away,” said Irene cheerfully. 
“ I hope you do not think this is very foolish in 
me, but I should hate to have one of my Christ- 
mas presents miscarry.” 

“Foolish?” said the other. “I was think- 
ing,” — and she blushed peony, and struggled 
with her own audacity, — “I was thinking that 
the mysterious present will have a double value 
now, because two kind people have a share 
in it.” 

How had she ever said it ! She had never 
said so bold a thing since she was a coura- 
geous schoolgirl, and had told Mr. Torrey, to 
his face, that she thought he had scanned a line 
wrong. 

For Mrs. Donne was a pure Bostoneer of 
sixteen quarteriiigs. They say no one is so 
proud; which is probably true. It is also true. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


175 


when the blood is purple and genuine, and the 
woman conscientious and living in the higher 
life, that nobody is so shy. And that she, 
Elizabeth Donne, should have made such a 
speech to a perfect stranger, was to herself 
one of the miracles of the nineteenth century, 
though she was glad she had made it. This 
was the reason why she had blushed peony. 

After she had once made it, the ice-floe be- 
tween these two women was broken forever, 
and ground into the smallest kind of ice-dust ; 
and the dust was all swept away by the great 
current of God’s love, into the infinite ocean. 
And so, from that moment to this moment, 
these two great-eyed women have looked into 
the depths of each other’s souls, and have 
known each other and loved each other through 
and through, and will forever. 

For just as Irene was blushing too, and saying 
good-by, Elizabeth Donne, wild with her new 
courage, and rushing blindly forward to conquer 
other worlds, said : “ Please wait one minute ! 
Tell me, were you not speaking German to that 
sick man beside you in the car? Was he a 
German ? ” 


176 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


Irene explained that she was only helping, as 
she could, in the German ; but that the man 
was a Russian. 

“ Russian ! ” with a quick, sharp tone that 
made even Irene start, though she was not used 
to starting : “ Did you say Russian, madam ? ” 

It was the pale man on the lounge, who had 
before lain quiet and all-but unobserved. Irene 
explained in an instant who the Russian was, 
and told why she had him for a moment under 
her convoy. 

“ Then you know where he is now ? ” 

Yes, she knew, or knew where she had left 
him. She had sent him, with the boy Mrs. 
Donne saw, on the errands he had to do, and 
he would be at his new home as soon as these 
were ended. 

“ Did he seem a — well, could he read, or was 
he a common sailor ? ” 

“ I could not guess,” Irene said, “ what he 
was. He could read, for he could write ; and I 
noticed that his handwriting was manly and 
firm. The letters he showed me were a gentle- 
man’s letters. They were neat, and neatly 
kept. They were evidently written by some 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


177 


one whose English handschrift^'^ and she 
laughed, “ was as bad as my German is ; but I 
thought no worse of them for that.” 

“ I was wondering,” said the sick man almost 
eagerly, “ if he could read Russian into German, 
or into Swedish even.” He said this with a sort 
of wistful expression, which only an invalid can 
use or understand. 

“ Swedish,” said Irene, “ perhaps Swedish. 
His German — well, his German is as bad as 
mine.” 

“ You see,” said poor Mr. Donne, rousing up 
with a little of an invalid’s feeling that he is the 
only important person in the world, “ these peo- 
ple at Hamburg, Perthes’s people you know, 
have sent me out this collection of Philarete’s 
Sermons, and they have sent these new poems 
by Glinka ; and here they have sent these new 
novels of Senkoffski’s, and there is a story of 
Dahl’s, all in Russian, of which I cannot even 
read the characters. Of course, you know I can 
send them all back ; I suppose, indeed, I ought 
to. I suppose they meant to send them to 
somebody else, somebody who knew something, 
but one hates to lose a good chance. You 
12 


178 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


know, well, they seem to be thrown in my way. 
And if there is anything good to read in the 
world, or anything new, and an express-man 
actually brings it into your house, and you have 
really cut the cord, and have the book in your 
hand, why you know, madam, that it seems 
wicked to send it back again.” 

Anything good to read, and anything new ! 
And this was what this man said who had all 
those fascinating piles of French and German 
books at his side, which to Irene’s eye had 
seemed piled up like the gateway of the Happy 
Land. 

“ At the least we can try,” said Irene, while 
she thought what I have written in these six 
lines. And at first she thought she would send 
Jeannie back to 99 “Needy” Street; but then 
she remembered that the joy of inviting and 
sending would be, in itself, so much comfort to 
the poor sick man ; and so she only gave him 
the address of Feodor Ivanovitch at Mrs. McGof- 
fin’s, 99 Oneida Street. He took it really cheer- 
ily, and read it with a smile, to say : “ Feodor 
Ivanovitch! that is like a novel already. Did 
you ever read Ivan Ivanovich? No, of course 
you are too young.” 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


179 


Irene did not say that she had read Homer 
and the Book of Job, but bade good-by now, 
and took Jeannie away. 

How bright Beacon Street seemed to her, and 
how she and Jeannie beamed upon the babies in 
the carriages ! She asked Jeannie if she ever 
saw, in Aberdeen, a perambulator that folded up. 
And Jeannie had seen one, and explained it to 
her. And Irene met ever so many of her friends. 
And one tall girl, whom she hardly knew, 
stopped her, and asked some question ; and 
Irene wondered why she stopped her to ask her 
something of no consequence at all. I can tell 
you why the girl stopped her ; she wanted to see 
just that look of peace and of joy and energy all 
fused together. She wanted to go up the hill, 
baptized again and made alive in that holy 
spirit. And Irene went down the hill chatter- 
ing with Jeannie, but wondering why the tall 
girl stopped her. 

“ Is Mrs. Herbert in ? ” 

No, Mrs. Herbert was not in. This was 
Irene’s first disappointment of that day. She 
had just time to think that ; for she had really 
wanted to see the tender, foreign face, broad 


180 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


at the temples, you know, and with a low fore- 
head, not looking in the very least like Pallas 
Minerva. She had wanted to see this again ; 
but, if it was not to be so, why, it was not. 
So she simply left the pink parcel with a doubt- 
ing servant-girl, who, even at Christmas, dis- 
trusted Greeks who did not come in carriages, 
even if they brought gifts, and left them. 
Even in pink paper the servant-girl thought 
that this was a preparation to clean silver, and 
would be called for again. So she doubted 
about' taking it; but Irene, who understood 
all this without a word, left it none the less, 
and charged her to give it to Mrs. Herbert 
the moment she came in. 

“ Who shall I say called ? ” asked the girl, 
at last determining that this was not powder 
in disguise. 

“No matter who. Come, Jeannie,” to the 
Scotch girl, who was wondering before a print 
in the hall of John Knox abusing Queen Mary ; 
and they stepped out again, to meet poor 
Mrs. Herbert, pale and wearied, but still so 
tender and so little like Pallas Minerva, step* 
ping down from her own carriage. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


181 


Irene crossed the sidewalk. “ It is Mrs. 
Herbert, I believe. I have just left at your 
house a little parcel which I saw in your hand 
in the street-car. You dropped it,” she said 
hurriedly, when she saw Mrs. Herbert growing 
so pale and almost gasping as she turned round 
to her, “ and after you had gone I found it.” 

“ I believe you are an angel,” said the other. 
“ No, do not go away ; just come in for one 
moment. Let me tell you how frightened 1 
was, and what a loss it would have been.” 
And she thundered again at the bell ; as if any 
thunder would have startled from her dime- 
novel, before her time, the girl whose business 
it was to attend it, and who simply said, when 
she heard it first, “ Imperdent critters ! let ‘em 
ring ! ” 

At last, however, the last chapter of the 
novel was done, and the girl let her mistress 
and Irene in, both of them almost crying with 
excitement now, and Jeannie wondering, but 
forgotten, behind. 

“ Why, you see,” said the intense, overstrung 
lady, “ you see, my dear child, my brother sails 
on Monday. And when those people in the 


182 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


railway-office said just now it would be two 
or three days, perhaps, before the conductor 
brought it in. Besides, I did not think I had 
it in the car. I remembered laying it down 
on the table where we had the meeting. But 
here it is, do let me show her to you. My 
dear, dear mother ! You see,” this as she 
pulled at the refractory string, “ you see, the 
setting is all gold, and I knew, if I lost it in 
the street, — why, my own dear child, I might 
never have seen it again.” 

The string was off, and she showed to Irene a 
miniature picture, beautiful, very beautiful. 

Irene looked at it long without speaking. 
Then she said, “ It would be hard never to see 
that face again.” 

“And yet — do you know ? ” said Mrs. Her- 
bert, “ it is not half beautiful enough. This 
is just rest, you know, — yes, happy rest, satis- 
fied rest. Oh, I have seen her look so a thou- 
sand times ! But when she talked to people, 
talked to us children, you know, kept the whole 
town alive, why, her face nearly blazed with 
light. Of course you could not put that i-" a 
picture.” 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


183 


Then she made Irene sit down, and, perhaps 
with something of her mother’s magnetism, held 
her there, as she talked of her mother, of this 
brother who was to sail the next week, of what 
they had been to each other, and how she 
should miss him ; just as if Irene were not a 
stranger. Ah, me ! was she ever a stranger to 
anybody ? 

“But, my dear child, you look pale. Come 
right here, come into the dining-room. My 
lunch is all ready, too. Sit right down here. 
Let me send for a glass of wine. I did not 
see that you were tired. I hope you are not 
as faint as I am, now this is all over.” 

And so she made Irene stay and lunch with 
her. She did not remember Jeannie, but Irene 
did. And Irene knew liow happy Jeannie was, 
cruising round in that front reception-room 
where she had been left, and inventing for her- 
self stories from the hundred pictures on the 
walls. Nay, Irene even amused herself by the 
contrast between Jeannie’s life and Mrs. Her- 
bert’s. She had called Jeannie from washing 
up her “ dinner-tilings,” an hour ago ; and here 
was Mrs. Herbert refreshing herself, that she 


184 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


might await her dinner five hours hence. As 
for Irene, she was hungry and was faint, and 
was glad that Mrs. Herbert asked her to lunch. 
If it had not been for the pink-paper parcel, 
she would have stopped at the B. Y. M. C. U. 
coffee-room, and have eaten what Bridget used 
to call a “bully of beef,” and Mr. Woodbury 
would have punched out the worth of it from 
her ticket. 

And so these two women sat, and Mrs. Her- 
bert poured out the whole story of her agony 
when she had discovered her loss ; how she 
came to have the picture with her, she told 
that ; why she had it in her hand as the safest 
way to carry it, she told that. Some sexes 
will understand this last, without explanation : 
to other sexes the safety of this method of 
preserving small valuables will be a marvel for- 
ever. And, when once more she had thanked 
Irene for coining, she said, so pleasantly : — 

“ I saw you too. I was wondering about 
you, and making a romance about you, all 
the time. Who your Tartar friend was, I 
wondered ; and I heard the funny boy jabber 
German to him. It was mean, but I could not 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


185 


help listening. It sounded so like dear Blank- 
enheim.” 

“ Why ! ” said Irene, interrupting. “ He 
showed me a letter from Blankenheim only this 
very morning.” 

“ Did he ? Why, where is he ? who is he ? 
I must see him. Can you send him here, my 
dear Miss — Why, what is your name ? I felt 
as if I had known you always, and now I do 
not know what your name is.” 

Irene laughed and told, and then the impet- 
uous lady rushed on. She had none of the 
shyness of Mrs. Donne — not a bit of it! 

“ Why, I spent five — six — years of the best 
years of my girlhood in Blankenheim. Look 
here, and here, and here ! These are pictures 
Horace made there. And here, — is not this 
pretty ? There, I lived in that room ; see, 
that window, just above the poplar, is my 
window.” 

And so they fell back to talk about Rudolf 
and the Russian ; and Irene told of the coinci- 
dence about the Russian books and the pale 
gentleman at Mrs. Donne’s. 

“ Did he rouse up so ? Poor, dear fellow, 


18G HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


that is the best I have heard to-day. There 
he lies, you know, all worn out. It would be 
wicked to say hlase, for he is not one whit 
hlasS^ but it seems so. That beautiful house, 
you know, and that lovely wife, and those 
books, and all he knows, you know, for he 
knows everything, and yet every day so dark 
to him, and the outlook so gloomy.’’ 

“ Why, what is the matter ? ” 

“ Matter ? What is the matter with any of 
us ? Living forty times too fast. J ust as bad 
for good people to do so as for bad people ; 
just as bad for learned people like him, as for 
fools like me. ‘ Nervous exhaustion,’ they call 
it, — ‘ nervous depression.’ Used up ten years 
of life in five, I say. And he did it just as 
much, you know, in all his mines and smelt- 
ing-works and machines, and presiding at the 
Hospital, and building the Athenseum, and 
arranging about the Convalescent Home, just 
as much as if he had been the worst roue of 
them all. And then, that angel of a wife of 
his just sits by, and sends for doctors, and 
nurses him. And he thinks he shall die in a 
poor-house, and won’t so much as buy himself a 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


187 


shoe-string, and is all used up and wretched. 
Now you have given him one cheerful hour. 
Miss May hew, it is the best present that has 
been made to-day.” 

Then she fell to asking more about the 
Russian ; and why Irene had said that Mr. 
Donne would do better with him in Swedish 
than in German. “ He does not know much 
Swedish,” said she, “ though they did spend 
some time in Stockholm. I mean to send Inge- 
borg in there. You must see Ingeborg ; she is 
so pretty.” And then she rang, and made a 
message for Ingeborg to come in, and asked 
Ingeborg about the sewing. Ingeborg was a 
Swedish girl who was the seamstress. She 
stood a minute and made pretty answers in 
German, and then went away. 

“ The sweetest creature in the world,” said 
her mistress ; “ reads everything I read, and 
much more. I made her read me ‘ The Chil- 
dren of the Lord’s Supper ’ in the Swedish, 
I’list that I might hear the pretty words.” And 
she repeated in the Swedish the closing lines. 

So half an hour sped very pleasantly. And 
when Irene called Jeannie from her dream of 


188 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


romance, and they walked across the Public 
Garden together, and Jeannie thanked her for 
taking her with her, and told her it was the 
best Christmas present she ever had, — why, it 
occurred to Irene, all at once, that, in starting 
to give the rest of the world a Christmas pres- 
ent, she had given one to herself as well. 

Should she go down to No. 99 “ Needy ” 
Street, to see that there was no botch there ? 
No, she would not go. They were not fools ; 
they would take care of themselves. She would 
go home in the lovely winter afternoon, and 
write a letter to somebody to tell the adven- 
tures of the day. 

Not that they seemed to her specially varied ; 
all life was varied for her, and very full ; but 
she did think that they ranged rather wider 
in their interest than was usual even in her 
adventures. 

So, before she was tired, she was at her 
pretty Davenport, in her pretty room, looking 
out over the Valley Beautiful upon the Delec- 
table Mountains, as the sun was setting cheerily 
on them, and lighting them up with the glories 
of amber and gold and fire. 


CHAPTER III. 


ANOTHER YEAR. 

H OW quickly a year goes round ! 

And this year the snow had fallen as 
early as Thanksgiving. And on Adam and 
Eve’s Day, in the morning, a little fresh fall 
had made every roadway look as if it were ready 
for a wedding. But the sky had cleared, and it 
was, oh, so blue ! And Irene came out and 
stood on the top of the high steps, and looked 
across the Valley Beautiful to the Delectable 
Mountains. 

She was in a seal-skin sack this time, and 
she wore a pretty Polish cap, all ready for a 
sleigh-ride ; and as, with her deep brown eyes, 
she looked into the blue, you would have 
known that she was looking into heaven. 

Just a minute she stood there, and then 
up drove a heavily-robed sleigh ; and Horace 
Whittier, who drove the handsome horses, flung 
down the reins, sure that they would stand, 


190 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


and ran up the steps, and caught her by both 
hands. 

“lam ten minutes early!” cried he, “but 
you are earlier. Victory, victory I She waits 
on the steps for her impatient lover.” 

“ Impudent boy I ” said Irene, as he almost 
lifted her into the sleigh, “ is there nothing in 
the world but you and your old horses? Would 
not anybody, with half a quarter of an eye, 
want to stand and see that snow on the ever- 
greens, and my dear old Blue Hills white 
against the sky? And you suppose I was 
waiting for you ? ” 

“ Anyway,” said he happily, as he tucked her 
in, “ it is lucky I came early.” 

“ I think you are apt to come early,” said she, 
and they laughed happily as they started. 

“ Dear child,” said Horace, “ these bear-skins 
are the most false of shams. This thing we sit 
in is nothing but an express wagon. I made 
just, room enough for your little feet; lucky 
they are so little. But 'for me, what with 
Noah’s-arks and tin horses, and the Dutchman 
and his wife, and battledoors, — I am sure I 
put my heel through the battledoors, — and 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


191 


the thermometer that I sat upon, and my poor 
sister’s glass shade, which I am afraid I drove 
the whip-stock through, — for me, I should be 
very uncomfortable if you were not here. You 
do not think all these people would mind if I 
just melted the rime on my moustache by rest- 
ing it for an instant on that velvet cheek of 
yours, — do you ? ” 

“ Horace, if you do not talk sense, I will 
beckon to that conductor, and go for my errands 
in the Paul Dudley. People ride in the Paul 
Dudley without having idiots talk to them.” 

“ Sweetheart, the Paul Dudley shall be hung 
this day with camellias and orange-blossoms. It 
was in the Paul Dudley that you found the pict- 
ure. If it had not been for the Paul Dudley 
and the picture, where should I have been this 
day?” and now he was very serious. 

Dear Horace,” said she, “ it was to be, and 
forty Paul Dudleys could not help it. Some 
things are written in heaven.” So they talked, 
now of the gravest and now of the gayest; 
laughed sometimes, and all but cried sometimes, 
as he told some story of his adventurous life, — 
or she some story of hers, so quiet ; but he said 


192 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


that hers was more adventurous than his. They 
talked, they laughed, or they were even silent, 
in all the joy and certainty of happy love. 

“ How splendid your bear-skin cap is ! ” said 
she ; “ if it were only after dark when we came 
to Oneida Street, we might ask the policeman 
to show us the road to the roof of the houses, 
and you could go down the chimney with the 
Noah’s-arks and things, while 1 held the pawing 
steeds on the ridge-pole. On the whole, I am 
rather glad the methods of civilization don’t re- 
quire us to ride on ridge-poles. I am sure I 
should be frightened. You mustn’t stay too 
long, and I don’t think I will get out. Just at 
noon we must be at the wedding ; and there ’s 
the hospital and Jeannie’s people beside.” 

“Never fear me about being late at wed- 
dings,” said the impetuous Horace ; “sometimes 
I think I can never wait till they come. But the 
longest lane turns at last.” 

“I tell you,” said she, “that you are such a 
favorite with Mrs. McGoffin, that you will stand 
whispering soft nothings in her ear while I am 
freezing to death here ; and at last I shall take 
ipercy on the horses, and walk them ten or 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


193 


twenty times up the street and down, and they 
will take fright in Harrison Avenue, and run 
five miles, and I shall lie over the back of the seat 
screaming, ‘ Horace, Horace ! ’ and you will have 
no clew to follow by but a line of Noah’s-arks 
and thermometers on the road ; and a mounted 
policeman will come to the rescue, and will take 
me to a grausome church near Punkapog, and 
insist that I shall be his wife.’’ 

“ Irene, I will kill that policeman ! I shall 
arrive on my bicycle just in time ; and when the 
minister says, ‘ Does any man know cause ? ’ I 
shall say ‘I do.’ I shall shoot him with his own 
revolver ; I shall take his place, and for once a 
wedding will come off earlier than it was ex- 
pected. Never you fear Mrs. McGoffin’s fas- 
cinations. I shall be down in twenty seconds, 
before the horses know that I have stopped.” 

Nor did he much exaggerate his own speed. 
He left the Noah’s-arks and horses and guns 
and swords and cups and balls and the prayer- 
book and the tippet, for Mrs. McGoffin, Dennis 
McGoffin, and all the little McGoffins, and was 
down, as he said himself, “ in no time.” Then 
to Jeannie’s friends, with the self-registering 
13 


194 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


thermometer and the Scott’s Poems for the old 
people, and no end of parcels for the 3^oungsters. 
Here, too, he left Irene’s Christmas wishes, and 
told why Irene could not stay long that day. 

At the hospital they both alighted together. 
Of course the children of a year ago were gone. 
But life is almost as finite at one Christmas-tide 
as at another: so there was no lack, alas, of 
broken arms and broken legs and burned hands 
among the little ones. This year there were no 
paper soldiers for them ; but, by the time they 
said good-by, each child had on his bed-table 
a box of pewter soldiers, Prussian for the Ger- 
man girl, French for the French boy, red-coats 
for little Johnny Bull, and even Highlanders 
for the little Sawney. These, and two or three 
books for the bigger children, left the surgical 
ward happy. 

“Thirteen minutes for the Weis children!” 
cried he, “ and then there will be not a magnet 
nor a Noah’s-ark in the shebang.” Nor was 
there. 

Then, as on the wings of the wind, he cut 
across to the little Swedish Emanuel Church; 
and here was Tom, waiting for the horses. And, 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 195 

quite in time, Horace gravely led Irene up the 
right-hand aisle, and a very famous usher, with 
an enormous bridal favor, placed him and her 
in a pew among the bridegroom’s friends. 

“ I told him to put us here,” whispered he, 
“ because I was so afraid the bride would have 
more on her side than poor Feodor. She is so 
pretty, you know.” 

“ You must not talk in meeting. You must 
sit perfectly still.” 

Nor did he have to wait long before the 
bride’s procession moved up one aisle ; and the 
pretty Ingeborg, blushing under her orange- 
blossoms and her lace veil, met, face to face, 
the handsome, proud, olive-faced Feodor, who 
appeared, with his best men, at the head of his 
aisle; and then in the quaint, homely Swed- 
ish, and by that pretty form of service, dear, 
good Mr. Johanssen made them one. 

Then, as is the sensible custom of the olden 
churches, all the friends met for a moment to 
sign the register. So in the vestry, while it was 
got ready, Mr. Donne and his wife, Mrs. Her- 
bert, Horace, and Irene, as well as Mrs. Mc- 
Goffin and Dennis, and J eannie and her father 


196 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


and mother, all stood together, making, indeed, 
near half of the witnesses. 

“ Thank you so for the Patriarch’s Sermons,” 
said Irene to Mr. Donne. “ As soon as we are 
well on our journey, I shall make Horace read 
them aloud to me.” 

And Mr. Donne seemed like a different man 
from that poor, languid fellow we saw a year 
before, as he said eagerly : — 

“ You will find the Poems at your house. 
Roberts has sent the first volume from the bind- 
er’s for a wedding present.” 

“ I believe, Mr. Donne, you claim the making 
of this match,” said Horace, as he approached 
them ; “ now I thought it was my blunder.” 

“ Yours ! how yours ? ” 

“ Why, because she was my sister’s best 
bower, don’t you see ? ” 

“ Your sister’s fiddlestick ! The Tartar, there, 
looks to me as if he thought he made it. For 
my part, I give Miss Mayhew the credit.” 

Meanwhile Mrs. Donne was hovering round 
Irene, and asking about the evening, and talking 
about her husband, and making her remember 
how ill he was, and making her wonder how 
well he seemed now. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


197 


“ I believe, Irene, the day you came in and 
set him to work on other people, that day 
dates his recovery.” 

“ He has sent me the volume of Philarete's 
Sermons ; and I shall make Horace read them 
to me.” 

“ You will find that easy enough. They are 
just such sermons as men like. They are the 
Patriarch’s annual reviews of the social condi- 
tion of Russia, you know. They are not a bit 
like what we call sermons.” 

“And the Poems?” 

“ Oh ! the drollest, weirdest, most enticing, 
and most provoking things you ever saw. But, 
Irene, have you seen Rudolf? You will not 
know him in his ulster. He is at the door with 
the horses. Do you know Edward says that 
boy is a genius ? But you found that out 
too.” 

Irene, in another minute, was kissing Inge- 
borg. Then she gave her hand to Feodor. 

“It was a happy day, I assure you, for me. 
Miss Mayhew,” said he, in that preternaturally 
accurate English which Russians speak when 
they speak any, “ the day I met you in the 


198 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


hospital.” “ And the day when my little Ru- 
dolf piloted you to Mr. Donne.” “ And the 
day when Ingeborg came in to help out his 
Swedish,” said the proud bridegroom. 

And here came Mr. Johanssen and his clerk, 
with the big book of the register. 

And, after they had all signed, the minister 
bade the bride and bridegroom good-by, with a 
sort of benediction ; and then with much hand- 
clapping, and gratulations in many languages, 
Mr. and Mrs. Ivanovitch withdrew, and he 
lifted her to the waiting carriage. 

“ Irene,” said the impetuous Mrs. Herbert as 
they looked from the window, “I want you to 
notice that faultless polonaise of hers. Now 
you think Madame Pierrot made it, and well 
you may. But she did not. It is Ingeborg’s 
own idea, to tell the truth ; but every piece was 
cut, and every stitch taken, by your Jeannie 
Fraser. The girl is an artist.” 

“ And so you will find her, Fanny. She will 
not run your Wheeler & Wilson long. Before 
you are five years older she will be in your bil- 
liard-room, using the upper light as she models 
her group of ” — 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


199 


“ Come, Irene, come, Irene, you and Fanny 
must not philosophize forever. The Lady 
Irene’s shebang stops the way, and Tom is 
dying to get out of it ; I to get in. Good-by, 
good people, good-by.” And so wedding num- 
ber one ended. 


CHAPTER LAST. 

TWO BY TWO. 

^HE Church of Glad Tidings was dimly 
lighted that same evening. In festoons 
on the pulpit and the font, in lines marking the 
shape of the cross behind the pulpit, there was 
enough evergreen to show that this was Christ- 
mas time. On the communion-table itself was 
a heap of beautiful flowers, which covered the 
low vase whose waters kept them fresh. The 
font was overflowing too with white flowers; 
and so one knew that here were preparations 
for a festival. From the organ came heavenly, 
sympathizing, and peaceful harmonies. And, in 
the front pews, perhaps a hundred people waited 


20t7 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


quietl}^ — among them everybody we met at 
Ingeborg’s wedding, except Mr. Johanssen and 
his clerk, and two others. And many more 
were there, of whom it has not been necessary 
to advise this reader. The minister sat in his 
great high-backed chair, holding his book in 
his hand. 

Quietly, and without any one’s knowing the 
moment of their entrance except the minister, 
Horace and Irene came into the church to- 
gether, and walked slowly up to the chancel. 
The church flashed light for their welcome. 
The minister stood up to greet them, and, as 
the strains of the organ died away, began the 
service: “We are gathered together,” — 

And as he looked upon her face, as their eyes 
met, it was as the face of an angel — love, cour- 
age, truth, and peace. And then he could look 
into Horace’s face, and there was the happy, 
strong look of a brave man, — joy, courage, 
certainty, peace. 

I suppose Irene’s dress, which was a present 
from Mrs. Herbert, was like other people’s wed- 
ding dresses. I sat rather back in the church ; 
but I am sure it was not a claret-colored alpaca. 


NEITHER SCRIP NOR MONEY. 


201 


Indeed I know, from some notes before me — 
why should I conceal it from you, dear Fanchon 
and dear Dick? — I know that it was of a creamy- 
white brocade. You thought the veil was of 
Valenciennes ? Yes! but in truth it was made 
on cushions, in Dunrobin Alley, by Rudolf Weis’s 
own mother, who had been taught all that art 
in Belgium, before she was sixteen years old. 
That was her present to the bride. And the 
myrtle wreath the bride wore, with its lovely 
blossoms, was from myrtle, every spray of which 
Rudolf himself had grown in his own windows. 

And this bouquet, which even Horace let her 
carry instead of an orthodox bouquet of orange- 
blossoms, — you see how pretty it is, though it 
is not all white, — it is made, every leaf of it, 
from the flowers the hospital children have been 
nursing in their own windows. The Maltese 
cross she wears is Edward Donne’s present; and 
the bouquet-holder- — all that curious open sil- 
ver flligree-work — is the work of Feodor’s own 
hands. There is Feodor, and there is Ingeborg 
with him, in the third pew on the bridegroom’s 
side. 

There is not a person in the church, from the 


202 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


old minister forward, but would gladly die for 
Irene, though they would all rather live for her. 
There is not a person here but is perfectly 
happy, because she is perfectly happy, — or they 
hope she will be. Perfectly happy she is, or 
she thinks she is. Perfectly happy is he, or he 
thinks he is. But how little he knows or she 
knows yet what a life of perfect happiness is ! 
How much better will they know even twelve 
months from to-day ! 

So the minister blessed them with all his 
heart. And the organ waked from its silence, 
and sounded forth the wedding-march ; and 
Horace led her in triumph from the church, 
and we all followed : 

“ Two by two ; that is the rule.” 


To illustrate another form of the willingness 
to Lend a Hand, I wrote Stand and Wait. 


STAND AND WAIT: 

A STORY OF CHRISTMAS. 


CHAPTER I. 

CHRISTMAS EVE. 

HEY ’VE. come ! they Ve come ! ” 



This was the cry of little Herbert, as 
he ran in from the square stone which made 
the large doorstep of the house. Here he had 
been watching, a self-posted sentinel, for the 
moment when the carriage should turn the cor- 
ner at the bottom of the hill. 

“ They ’ve come ! they ’ve come ! ” echoed 
joyfully through the house ; and the cry pen- 
etrated out into the extension, or L, where 
the grown members of the himily were, in the 
kitchen, “ getting tea” by some formulas more 
solemn than ordinary. 

“ Have they come ? ” cried Grace ; and she 
set her skillet back to the quarter-deck, or after- 
part of the stove, lest its white contents should 


204 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


burn while she was away. She threw a waiting 
handkerchief over her shoulders, and ran with 
the others to the front door, to wave something 
white, and to be in at the first welcome. 

Young and old were gathered there in that 
hospitable open space, where the side road swept 
up to the barn on its way from the main road. 
The bigger boys of the home party had scat- 
tered half-way down the hill by this time. 
Even grandmamma had stepped down from the 
stone, and walked half-way to the roadway. 
Every one was waving something. Those who 
had no handkerchiefs had hats or towels to 
wave ; and the more advanced boys began an 
undefined or irregular cheer. 

But the carryall advanced slowly up the hill, 
with no answering handkerchief, and no bon- 
neted head stretched out from the side. And, 
as it neared Sam and Andrew, their enthusiasm 
could be seen to droop, and George and Her- 
bert stopped their cheers as it came up to them ; 
and before it was near the house, on its grieved 
way up the hill, the bad news had come up be- 
fore it, as bad news will, — “ She has not come, 
after all. ” 


STAND AND WAIT. 


205 


It was Huldah Root, Grace’s older sister, 
who had not come. John Root, their father, 
had himself driven down to the station to meet 
her ; and Abner, her oldest brother, had gone 
with him. It was two years since she had been 
at home, and the whole family was on tiptoe to 
welcome her. Hence the unusual tea prepara- 
tion ; hence the sentinel on the doorstep ; hence 
the general assembly in the yard ; and, after all, 
she had not come ! It was a wretched disap- 
pointment. Her mother had that heavy, silent 
look, which children take as the heaviest afflic- 
tion of all, when they see it in their mothers’ 
faces. John Root himself led the horse into 
the barn, as if he did not care now for anything 
which might happen in heaven above or in 
earth beneath. The boys were voluble in their 
rage : “ It is too bad ! ” and, “ Grandmamma, 
don’t you think it is too bad ? ” and, “ It is the 
meanest thing I ever heard of in all my life ! ” 
and, “ Grace, why don’t you say anything ? 
Did you ever know anything so mean ? ” As 
for poor Grace herself, she was quite beyond 
saying anything. All the treasured words she 
had laid up to say to Huldah ; all the doubts 


206 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


and hopes and guesses, which were secret to 
all but God, but which were to be poured out in 
Huldah’s ear as soon as they were alone, were 
coming up one by one, as if to choke her. She 
had waited so long for this blessed fortnight 
of sympathy, and now she had lost it. Grace 
could say nothing. And poor grandmamma, on 
whom fell the quieting of the boys, was at* 
heart as wretched as any of them. 

Somehow, something got itself put on the 
supper-table ; and, when John Root and Abner 
came in from the barn, they all sat down to pre- 
tend to eat something. What a miserable con- 
trast to the Christmas Eve party which had 
been expected ! 

The observance of Christmas is quite a nov- 
elty in the heart of New England among the 
lords of the manor. Winslow and Brewster, 
above Plymouth Rock, celebrated their first 
Christmas by making all hands work all day in 
the raising of their first house. It was in that 
way that a Christian empire was begun. They 
builded better than they knew. They and 
theirs, in that hard day’s work, struck the key- 
note for New England for two centuries and a 


STAND AND WAIT. 


207 


half. And many and many a New Englander, 
still in middle life, remembers that in childhood, 
though nurtured in Christian homes, he could 
not have told, if he were asked, on what day of 
the year Christmas fell. But as New England, 
ill the advance of the world, has come into the 
general life of the world, she has shown no in- 
aptitude for the greater enjoyments of life ; and, 
with the true catholicity of her great Congrega- 
tional system, her people and her churches seize, 
one after another, all the noble traditions of the 
loftiest memories. And so in this matter we 
have in hand : it happened that the Roots, in 
their hillside home, had determined that they 
would celebrate Christmas, as never had Roots 
done before since Josiah Root landed at Salem 
from the Hercules, with other Kentish people, 
in 1635. Abner and Gershom had cut and 
trimmed a pretty fir-balsam from the edge of 
the Hotchkiss clearing, and it was now in the 
best parlor. Grace, with Mary Bickford, her 
firm ally and other self, had gilded nuts, and 
rubbed lady-apples, and strung popped corn ; 
and the tree had been dressed in secret, the 
youngsters all locked and warned out from the 


208 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


room. The choicest turkeys of the drove, and 
the tenderest geese from the herd, and the 
plumpest fowls from the barnyard, had been sac- 
rificed on consecrated altars. And all this was 
but as accompaniment and side illustration of 
the great glory of the celebration, which was 
that Huldah, after her two years’ absence. Hub 
dah was to come home. 

And now she had not come, — nay, was not 
coming I 

As they sat down at their Barmecide feast, 
how wretched the assemblage of unrivalled 
dainties seemed ! John Root handed to his wife 
their daughter’s letter ; she read it and gave 
it to Grace, who read it, and gave it to her 
grandmother. No one read it aloud. To read 
aloud in such trials is not the custom of New 
England. 

Boston, Dec 24, 1848. 

Dear Father and Mother; It is dread- 
ful to disappoint you all, but I cannot come. 
1 am all ready, and this goes by the carriage that 
Avas to take me to the cars. But our dear little 
Horace has just been brought home, I am afraid, 
dying; but we cannot tell, and I cannot leave 


STAND AND WAIT. 


209 


him. You know there is really no one who can 
do what I can. He was riding on his pony. 
First the pony came home alone ; and, in five 
minutes after, two policemen brought the dear 
child in a carriage. His poor mother is very 
calm, but cannot think yet, or do anything. 
We have sent for his father, who is down-town. 
I try to hope that he may come to himself ; but 
he only lies and draws long breaths on his little 
bed. The doctors are with him now ; and I 
write this little scrawl to say how dreadfully 
sorry I am. A Merry Christmas to you all. Do 
not be troubled about me. 

Your own loving 

Huldah. 

P. S. I have got some little presents for the 
children ; but they are all in my trunk, and I 
cannot get them out now. I will make a bun- 
dle Monday. Good-by. The man is waiting. 

This was the letter that was passed from 
hand to hand, of which the contents slowly 
trickled into the comprehension of all parties, 
according as their several ages permitted them 


210 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


to comprehend. Sam, as usual, broke the si- 
lence by. saying : — 

“ It is a perfect shame ! She might as well be 
a nigger slave ! I suppose they think they have 
bought her and sold her. I should like to see 
’em all, just for once, and tell ’em that her flesh 
and blood is as good as theirs; and that, with 
all their airs and their money, they ’ve no busi- 
ness to ” — 

“Sam,” said poor Grace, “you shall not say 
such things. Huldah has stayed because she 
chose to stay ; and that is the worst of it. She 
will not think of herself, not for one minute ; 
and so — everything happens.” 

And Grace was sobbing beyond speech again ; 
and her intervention amounted, therefore, to 
little or nothing. The boys, through the even- 
ing, descanted among themselves on the outrage. 
Grandmamma, and, at last, their mother, took 
successive turns in taming their indignation ; 
but, for all this, it was a miserable evening. 
As for John Root, he took a lamp in one hand, 
and the Weekly Tribune in the other, and sat 
before the fire and pretended to read ; but not 
once did John Root change the fold of the paper 


STAND AND WAIT. 


211 


that evening. It was a wretched Christmas 
Eve ; and, at half-past eight, every light was 
out, and every member of the household was 
lying, stark-awake, in bed. 

Huldah Root, you see, was a servant with the 
Bartletts, in Boston. When she was onl}^ six- 
teen she was engaged at her trade, as a vest- 
maker, in that town ; and, by some chance, 
made an appointment to sew as a seamstress 
at Mrs. Bartlett’s for a fortnight. There were 
any number of children to be clothed there ; 
and the fortnight extended to a month. Then 
the month became two months. She grew fond 
of Mrs. Bartlett, because Mrs. Bartlett grew 
fond of her. The children adored her ; and she 
kept an eye to them ; and it ended in her en- 
gaging to spend the winter there, half-seam- 
stress, half-nurse, half-nursery-governess, and a 
little of everything. From such a beginning it 
had happened that she had lived there six years, 
in confidential service. She could cook better 
than anj'body in the liouse, — better than Mrs. 
Bartlett herself ; but it was not often that she 
tried her talent the-re. On a birthday perhaps. 


212 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


in August, she would make huckleberry cakes, 
by the old homestead receipt, for the children. 
She had the run of all their clothes as nobody 
else had ; took the younger ones to be meas- 
ured ; and saw that none of the older ones went 
out with a crack in a seam, or a rough edge at 
the foot of a trowser. It was whispered that 
Minnie had rather go into the sewing-room to 
get Huldah to show her about Alligation or 
Square-root, than to wait for Miss Thurber’s 
explanations in the morning. In fifty such 
ways it happened that Huldah, who, on the 
roll-call of the census-man, probably rated as a 
nursery-maid in the house, was the confidential 
friend of every member of the family, from Mr. 
Bartlett, for whom she knew where to find 
the Intelligencer, down to the chore-boy who 
came in to black the shoes. And so it was that, 
when poor little Horace was brought in with his 
skull knocked in by the pony, Huldah was, 
and modestly knew that she was, the most 
essential person in the stunned family-circle. 

While her brothers and sisters were putting 
out their lights at New Durham, heart-sick and 
wounded, Huldah was sitting in that still room. 


STAND AND WAIT. 


213 


where only the rough, choked breathing of poor 
Horace broke the sound. She was changing, 
once in ten minutes, tlie ice-water cloths ; was 
feeling of his feet sometimes ; wetting his tongue 
once or twice in an hour; putting her finger 
to his pulse, with a native sense which needed 
no second-hand to help it; and all the time, 
with the thought of him, was remembering how 
grieved and hurt and heart-broken they were at 
home. Every half-hour, or less, a pale face ap- 
peared at the door ; and Huldah just slid across 
the room and said : “He is really doing nicely, 
pray lie down ; ” or “ His pulse is surely bet- 
ter ; I will certainly come to you if it flags ; ” 
or “ Pray trust me, — I will not let you wait a 
moment if he needs you ; ” or Pray get ready 
for to-morrow. An hour’s sleep now will be 
worth everything to you then.” And the poor 
mother would crawl back to her baby and her 
bed, and pretend to try to sleep ; and in half an 
hour would appear again at the door. One 
o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock. How com- 
panionable Dr. Lowell’s clock seems when one 
is sitting up so, with no one else to talk to ! 
Four o’clock at last ; it is really growing to be 


214 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


quite intimate. Five o’clock. “ If I were in 
dear Durham now, one of the roosters would 
be calling,” — Six o’clock. — Poor Horace stirs, 
turns, flings his arm over. “ Mother — O Hul- 
dah ! is it you ? How nice that is ! ” And lie 
is unconscious again ; but he had had sense 
enough to know her. What a blessed Christmas 
present that is, to tell that to his poor mother 
when she slides in at daybreak, and says : “ You 
shall go to bed now, dear child. You see I am 
very fresh; and you must rest yourself, you 
know. Do you really say he knew you? Are 
you sure he knew you ? Why, Huldah, what 
an angel of peace you are ! ” 

So opened Huldah’s Christmas morning. 

Days of doubt, nights of watching. Every 
now and then the boy knows his mother, his 
father, or Huldah. Then will come this heavy 
stupor, which is so different from sleep. At last 
the surgeons have determined that a piece of 
the bone must come away. There is the quiet 
gathering of the most skilful at the determined 
hour ; there is the firm table for the little fel- 
low to lie on ; here is the ether and the sponge ; 


STAND AND WAIT. 


215 


and, of course, here and there, and everywhere, 
is Huldal). She can hold the sponge, or she can 
fetch and carry ; she can answer at once if she 
is spoken to ; she can wait, if it is waiting ; she 
can act, if it is acting. At last the wretched lit- 
tle button, which has been pressing on our poor 
boy’s brain, is lifted safely out. It is in Mor- 
ton’s hand ; he smiles and nods at Huldah as 
she looks inquiry, and she knows he is satisfied. 
And does not the poor child himself, even in his 
unconscious sleep, draw his breath more lightly 
than he did before ? All is well. 

“Who do you say that young woman is?” 
says Dr. Morton to Mr. Bartlett, as he draws 
on his coat in the doorway after all is over. 
“ Could we not tempt her over to the General 
Hospital ? ” 

“No, I think not. I do not think we can 
spare her.” 

The boy Horace is new-born that day ; a New 
Year’s gift to his mother. So pass Huldah’s 
holidaj^s. 


CHAPTER II. 


CHRISTMAS AGAIN. 

OURTEEN years make of the boy, whose 



pony was too much for him, a man equal to 
any prank of any pony. Fourteen years will do 
this, even to boys of ten. Horace Bartlett is 
the colonel of a cavalry regiment, stationed just 
now in West Virginia; and, as it happens, this 
twenty-four-year-old boy has an older commis^ 
sion than anybody in that region, and is the 
Post Commander at Talbot C. H., and will be, 
most likely, for the winter. The boy has a vein 
of foresight in him, a good deal of system ; and, 
what is worth while to have by the side of sys- 
tem, some knack of order. So soon as he finds 
that he is responsible, he begins to prepare foi* 
responsibility. His staff-officers are boys too ; 
but they are all friends, and all mean to do their 
best. His surgeon-in-charge took his degree 
at Washington last spring ; that is encouraging. 
Perhaps, if he has not much experience, he has. 


STAND AND WAIT. 


217 


at least, the latest advices. His head is level 
too ; he means to do his best, such as it is ; and, 
indeed, all hands in that knot of boy-counsellors 
will not fail for laziness or carelessness. Their 
youth makes them provident and grave. 

So among a hundred other letters, as October 
opens, Horace writes this ; — ' 

Talbot Court House, Va., Oct. 3 , 1863 . 

Dear Huldah, — Here we are still, as I 
have been explaining to father ; and, as you will 
see by my letter to him, here we are like to 
stay. Thus far we are doing sufficiently well. 
As I have told him, if my plans had been adopted 
we should have been pushed rapidly forward up 
the valley of the Yellow Creek; Badger's corps 
would have been withdrawn from before Win- 
chester; Wilcox and Steele together would have 
threatened Early ; and then, by a rapid flank 
movement, we should have pounced down on 
Longstreet (not the great Longs tree t, but lit- 
tle Longstreet) and compelled him to uncover 
Lynchburg ; we could have blown up the dams 
and locks on the canal, made a freshet to sweep 
all the obstructions out of James River ; and 


218 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


then, if they had shown half as much spirit on 
the Potomac, all of us would be in Eichmond 
for our Christmas dinner. But my plans, as 
usual, were not asked for, far less taken. So, 
as I said, here we are. 

Well, I have been talking with Lawrence 
Worcester, my surgeon-in-charge, who is a very 
good fellow. His sick-list is not bad now, and 
he does not mean to have it bad; but he says 
that he is not pleased with the ways of his ward- 
masters ; and it was his suggestion, not mine, 
mark you, that I should see if one or two of the 
Sanitary women would not come as far as this 
to make things decent. So, of course, I write 
to you. Don’t you think mother could spare 
you to spend the winter here ? It will be rough, 
of course ; but it is all in the good cause. Per- 
haps you know some nice women, — well, not 
like you, of course, but still, disinterested and 
sensible, — who would come too. Think of this 
carefully, I beg you, and talk to father and 
mother. Worcester sa3'S we may have three 
hundred' boys in hospital before Christmas ; 
if Jubal Early should come this way, I don’t 


STAND AND WAIT. 


219 


know how many more. Talk with mother and 
father. 

Always yours, 

Horace Bartlett. 

P. S. I have shown Worcester what I have 
written; he encloses a sort of official letter, 
which may be of use. He says, “Show this 
to Dr. Hayward ; get them to examine you 
and the others, and then the government, on 
his order, will pass you on.” I enclose this 
because, if you come, it will save time. 

Of course Huldah went. Grace Starr, her 
married sister, went with her, and Mrs. Phil- 
brick, and Anna Thwart. That was the way 
the\" happened to be all together in the Meth- 
odist church, that had been, of Talbot Court 
House, as Christmas holidays drew near, of the 
year of grace, 1863. 

She and her friends had been there quite 
long enough to be wonted to the strangeness of 
December in the open air. On her little table, 
in front of the desk of the church, were three or 
four buttercups in bloom, which she had gath- 
ered in an afternoon walk, with three or four 


220 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


heads of hawksweed. “ The beginning of one 
year,” Huldah said, “ with the end of the other. ” 
Nay, there was even a stray rose which Dr. 
Sprigg had found in a farmer’s garden. Hul- 
dah came out from the vestry, where her own 
bed was, iri the gray of the morning, changed 
the water for the poor little flowers, sat a mo- 
ment at the table to look at last night’s memo- 
randa ; and then beckoned to the ward-master, 
and asked him in a wliisper, what was the 
movement she liad heard in the night, — ‘‘An- 
other alarm from Early ? ” 

“No, miss, not an alarm. I saw the Colo- 
nel's orderly as he passed. He stopped here for 
Dr. Fenno’s case. There had come down an 
express from General Mitchell, and the men were 
called without the bugle, each man separately ; 
not a horse was to neigh, if they could help 
it. And really, miss, they were off in twenty 
minutes.” 

“ Off, who are off ? ” 

“ The whole post, miss, except the relief for 
to-day. There are not fifty men in the village, 
besides us here. The orderly thought they 
were to go down to Braxton’s ; but he did not 
know.” 


STAND AND WAIT. 


221 


Here was news indeed ! news so exciting that 
Huldah went back at once, and called the other 
women ; and they all of them together began on 
that wretched business of waiting. They had 
never yet known what it was to wait for a real 
battle. They had had their beds filled with 
this and that patient from one or another post, 
and had some gun-shot wounds of old standing 
among the rest ; but this was their first battle, 
if it were a battle. So the covers were taken off 
that long line of beds down on the west aisle, 
and from those under the singers’ seat ; and the 
sheets and pillow-cases were brought out from 
the linen-room, and aired, and put on. The 
biggest kettles are filled up with strong soup ; 
and they have milk-punch and beef-tea all in 
readiness; and everybody they can command 
is on hand to help lift patients and distribute 
food. But there is only too much time. Will 
there never be any news ? Anna Thwart and 
Doctor Sprigg have walked down to the bend 
of the hill, to see if any messenger is coming. 
As for the other women, they sit at their table ; 
they look at their watches; they walk down 
(o the door ; they come back to the table. 


222 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


I notice they have all put on fresh aprons, for 
the sake of doing something more in getting 
ready. 

Here is Anna Thwart. “They are coming! 
they are coming ! somebod}^ is coming. A 
mounted man is crossing the flat, coming to- 
wards us ; and the doctor told me to come back 
and tell.” Five minutes more, ten minutes 
more, an eternity more, and then a rat-tat-tat, 
rat-tat-tat, the mounted man is here. “ Wag- 
ons right behind. We bagged every man of 
them at Wyatt’s. Got there before daylight. 
Colonel White’s men from the Yellows came up 
just at the same time, and we pitched in before 
they knew it, — three or four regiments, thirteen 
hundred men, and all their guns.” 

“ And with no fighting ? ” 

“ Oh, yes ! fighting of course. The colonel 
has got a train of wagons down here, with tlie 
men that are hurt. That ’s why I am here. 
Here is his note.” Thus does the mounted 
man discharge his errand backward. 

Dear Doctor, — We have liad great success. 
We have surprised the whole post. The com- 


STAND AND WAIT. 


223 


pany across the brook tried hard to get away *, 
and a good many of them, and of Sykes’s men, 
are hit ; but I cannot find that we have lost 
more than seven men. I have nineteen wagons 
here of wounded men, some hurt pretty badly. 

Ever yours, H. 

So there must be more waiting. But now 
vre know what we are waiting for ; and the end 
will come in a finite world. Thank God, at 
half-past three, here they are ! Tenderly, gently. 
“ Hush, Sam ! Hush Csesar ! You talk too 
much.” Gently, tenderly. Twenty-seven of 
the poor fellows, with everything the matter, 
from a burnt face to a heart stopping its beats 
for want of more blood. 

“ Huldah, come here. This is my old class- 
mate, Barthew ; sat next me at prayers four 
years. He is a major in their army, you see. His 
horse stumbled, and pitched him against a stone- 
wall ; and he has not spoken since. Don’t tell 
me he is dying ; but do as well for him, Hul- 
dah,” — and the handsome boy smiled, — “do 
as well for him as you did for me.” So they 
carried Barthew, senseless as he was, tenderly 


224 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


into the church ; and he became E, 27, on an 
iron bedstead. Not half the soup was wanted, 
nor the beef-tea, nor the punch. So much the 
better. 

Then came day and night, week in and out, 
of army system and womanly sensibility; that 
quiet, cheerful, homish^ hospital life, in the quaint 
surroundings of the white-washed church ; the 
pointed arches of the windows and the faded 
moreen of the pulpit telling that it is a church, 
in a reminder not unpleasant. Two or three 
weeks of hopes and fears, failures and success, 
bring us to Christmas Eve. 

It is the surgeon-in-chief who happens to 
give our particular Christmas dinner, — I mean 
the one that interests you and me. Huldah 
and the other ladies had accepted his invitation. 
Horace Bartlett and his staff, and some of the 
other officers, were guests ; and the doctor had 
given his own permit that Major Barthew 
might walk up to his quarters with the ladies. 
Huldah and he were in advance, he leaning, 
with many apologies, on her arm. Dr. Sprigg 
^nd Ann^. Thwart were far behind, The two 


STAND AND WAIT. 


225 


married ladies, as needing no escort, were in the 
middle. Major Barthew enjoyed the emancipa- 
tion, was delighted with his companion, could 
not say enough to make her praise the glimpses 
of Virginia, even if it were West Virginia. 

“ What a party it is, to be sure ! ” said he. 
“ The doctor might call on us for our stories, as 
one of Dickens’s chiefs would do at a Christmas 
feast. Let us see, we should have 

The Surgeon’s Tale ; 

The General’s Tale; 

for we may at least make believe that Hod’s 
stars have come from Washington. Then he 
must call in that one-eyed servant of his, and 
we will have 

The Orderly’s Tale. 

Your handsome friend from Wisconsin shall tell 

The German’s Tale. 

I shall be encouraged to tell 

The Prisoner’s Talk. 

And you ” — 


15 


226 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


“ And 1 ? ” said Huldah laughing, because he 
paused. 

“You shall tell 

The Saint’s Tale.” 

Barthew spoke with real feeling, which he 
did not care to disguise. But Huldah was not 
there for sentiment ; and without quivering in 
the least, or making other acknowledgment, she 
laughed as she knew she ought to do, and said : 
“ Oh, no ! that is quite too grand, the story must 
end with 

The Superintendent of Special 
Relief’s Tale. 

It is a little unromantic to the sound ; but 
that ’s what it is.” 

“ I don’t see,” persisted the major “ if Super- 
intendent of Special Relief means Saint in Latin, 
why we should not say so.” 

“ Because we are not talking Latin,” said 
Huldah. “ Listen to me ; and, before we come 
to dinner, I will tell you a story pretty enough 
for Dickens, or any of them ; and it is a story 
not fifteen minutes old. 

“ Have you noticed that black-whiskered fel- 


STAND AND WAIT. 


227 


low, under the gallery, by the north window?— 
Yes, the same. He is French, enlisted, I think, 
in New London. I came to him just now, man- 
aged to say etrennes and NoU to him, and a few 
other French words, and asked if there were 
nothing we could do to make him more at 
home. Oh, no! there was nothing; madame 
was too good, and everybody was too good, and 
so on. But I persisted. I wished I knew more 
about Christmas in France ; and I staid by. 
‘No, madame, nothing; there is nothing: but, 
since you say it, — if there were two drops of 
red wine, — du vin de mon pays, madame ; but 
you could not, here in Virginia.’ Could not I ? 
Long arms has a superintendent of special re- 
lief. There was a box of claret, which was the 
first thing I saw in the store-room the day I 
took my keys. The doctor was only too glad 
the man had thought of it ; and you should 
have seen the pleasure that red glass — as full 
as I could pile it — gave him. The tears were 
running down his cheeks. Anna, there, had 
another Frenchman; and she sent some to him: 
and my man is now humming a little song about 
the vin rouge of Bourgogne. Would not Mr. 


228 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


Dickens make a pretty story of that for 
you, — 

The Frenchman’s Story?’” 

Barthew longed to say that the great novelist 
would not make so pretty a story as she did. 
But this time he did not dare. 

You are not going to hear the eight stories. 
Mr. Dickens was not there, nor, indeed, was 1. 
But a jolly Christmas dinner they had, though 
they had not those eight stories. Quiet they 
were, and very, very happy. It was a strange 
thing, if one could have analyzed it, that they 
should have felt so much at home, and so much 
at ease with each other, in that queer Virginian 
kitchen, where the doctor and his friends of his 
mess had arranged the feast ; and a happy thing 
it was, that the recollections of so many other 
Christmas homes should come in, not sadly, 
but pleasantly, and should cheer, rather than 
shade, the evening. They felt off-soundings, all 
of them. There was, for the time, no responsi- 
bility. The strain was gone. The gentlemen 
were glad to be dining with ladies, I be- 
lieve ; the ladies, unconsciously, were probably 
glad to be dining with gentlemen. The ofl&cers 


STAND AND WAIT. 


229 


were glad they were not on duty; and the 
prisoner, if glad of nothing else, was glad he 
was not in bed. But he was glad for many 
things beside. You see it was but a little post. 
They were far away; and they took things with 
the ease of a detached command. 

“ Shall we have any toasts ? ” said the doctor, 
when his nuts and raisins and apples at last 
appeared. 

“ Oh, no ! no toasts, — nothing so stiff as that.” 

Oh, yes ! oh, yes ! ’ ’ said Grace ; “ I should 
like to know what it is to drink a toast. Some- 
thing I have heard of all my life, and never saw.” 

“ One toast, at least, then,” said the doctor. 
“Colonel Bartlett, will you name the toast?” 

“ Only one toast? ” said Horace ; “ that is a 
hard selection: we must vote on that.” 

“ No, no ! ” said a dozen voices ; and a dozen 
laughing assistants at the feast offered their 
advice. 

“ I might give the Country ; I might give 
the Cause ; I might give the President : and 
everybody would drink,” said Horace. “ I might 
give Absent Friends, or Home, Sweet Home; 
but then we should cry.” 


230 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


“ Why do you not give the Trepanned Peo- 
ple ? ” said Worcester, laughing, “ or the Silver- 
headed Gentlemen ? ” 

“ Why don’t you give the Staff and the 
Line ? Why don’t you give Here ’s Hoping ? 
Give Next Christmas ; give the Medical Depart- 
ment ; and may they often ask us to dine ! ” 

“ Give Saints and Sinners,” said Major 
Barthew, after the first outcry was hushed. 

“I shall give no such thing,” said Horace. 
“We have had a lovely dinner; and we know 
we have ; and the host, who is a good fellow, 
knows the first thanks are not to him. Those 
of us who ever had our heads knocked open, 
like the Major and me^ do know. Fill your 
glasses, gentlemen, I give you the Special Diet 
Kitchen.” 

He took them all by surprise. There was 
a general shout; and the ladies all rose and 
dropped mock courtesies. 

“ By Jove,” said Barthew to the Colonel, 
afterwards, “ It was the best toast I ever drank 
in my life. Anyway, that little woman has 
saved my life. Do you say she did the same 
to you?” 


CHAPTER III. 


CHRISTMAS AGAIN. 

O you think that, when the war was over, 



^ Major Barthew, then Major-General, re- 
membered Huldah all the same, and came on 
and persuaded her to marry him, and that she 
is now sitting in her veranda, looking down 
on the Pamunkey River. You think that, do 
you not? 

Well, you were never so mistaken in your 
life ! If you want that story, you can go and 
buy yourself a dime-novel. I would buy The 
Rescued Rebel, or The Noble Nurse, if I were 
you. 

After the war was over, Huldah did make 
General Barthew and his wife a visit once, at 
their plantation in Pocataligo County ; but I 
was not there, and know nothing about it. 

Here is a Christmas of hers, about which she 
wrote a letter ; and, as it happens, it was a 
letter to Mrs. Barthew. 


232 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


HULDAH ROOT TO AGNES BARTHEW. 

Villiees-Bocage, Dec. 27, 1868. 

. . . Here I was, then, after this series of 
hopeless blunders, sole alone at the gave [French 
for station] of this little, out-of-the-way town. 
My dear, therti was never an American here since 
Christopher Columbus slept here when he was 
a boy. And here, you see, I was like to re- 
main ; for there was no possibility of the others 
getting back to me till to-morrow, and no good ^ 
in my trying to overtake them. All I could 
do was just to bear it, and to live on and live 
through, from Thursday to Monday; and really, 
what was worst of all was, that Friday was 
Christmas Day. 

Well, I found a funny little carriage, with a 
funny old man who did not understand my 
patois any better than I did his ; but he under- 
stood a franc-piece. I had my guide-book, and 
I said auherge; and we came to the oddest, most 
outlandish and old-fashioned establishment that 
ever escaped from one of Julia Nathalie wom- 
an’s novels. And here I am. 

And the reason, my dear Mrs. Barthew, that 
I take to-day to write to you, you and the 


STAND AND WAIT. 


233 


Colonel will now understand. You see it was 
onl}^ ten o’clock when I got here ; then I went 
to walk, many enfanU terrihles following respect- 
fully ; then I came home, and ate the funny 
refection ; then I got a nap ; then I went to 
walk again, and made a little sketch in the 
churchyard ; and this time, one of the chil- 
dren brought up her mother, a funny Norman 
woman, in a delicious costume, — I have a 
sketch of another just like her, — and she drop- 
ped a courtesy, and, in a very mild patois^ said 
she hoped the children did not trouble madame. 
And I said, “ Oh, no ! ” and found a sugar-plum 
for the child, and showed my sketch to the 
woman ; and she said she supposed madame 
was Anglaise. 

I said I was not Anglaise — and here the 
story begins ; for I said I was Americaine. And, 
do you know, her face lighted up as if I had 
said I was St. Gulda, or St. Hilda, or any of 
their Northmen Saints. 

“ Americaine ! est-il possible ? Jeannette,^ 
Gertrude^ faites vos reverences ; madame est 
Americaine. '' 

And, sure enough, they all dropped prefer- 


234 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


natural courtesies. And then the most eager 
enthusiasm ; how fond they all were of les 
Americaines^ but how no Americaines had ever 
come before ! And was madame at the Three 
Cygnets ? And might she and her son and her 
husband call to see madame at the Three Cyg- 
nets? And might she bring a little etrenne 
to madame ? And I know not what beside. 

I was very glad the national reputation had 
gone so far. I really wished I were Charles 
Sumner (pardon me, dear Mrs. Barthew!), that 
I might properly receive the delegation. But I 
said, “ Oh, certainly ! ” and, as it grew dark, 
— with my admiring cortege, whispering now 
to the street full of admirers that madame 
was Amerieaine^ — I returned to the Three 
Cygnets. 

And in the evening they all came. Really, 
you should see the pretty basket they brought 
for an etrenne, I could not guess then where 
they got such exquisite flowers ; these lovely 
stephanotis blossoms, a perfect wealth of roses, 
and all arranged with charming taste in a 
quaint country basket, such as exists nowhere 
but in this particular section of this quaint old 


STAND AND WAIT. 


235 


Normandy. In came the husband, dressed up 
and frightened, but thoroughly good in his 
look. In came my friend ; and then two sons 
and two wives, and three or four children : and, 
my dear Mrs. Barthew, one of the sons, I knew 
him in an instant, was a man we had at Talbot 
Court House when your husband was there. 
I think the Colonel will remember him, — a 
black-whiskered man, who used to sing a little 
song about le vin rouge of Bourgogne. 

He did not remember me ; that I saw in a 
moment. It was all so different, you know. 
In the hospital I had on a cap and apron, and 
here, — well it was another thing. My hostess 
knew that they were coming, and had me in 
her largest room, and I succeeded in making 
them all sit down ; and I received my formal 
welcome ; and I thanked in my most Parisian 
French; and then the conversation hung fire. 
But I took my turn now, and turned round to 
poor Louis. 

“You served in America, — did you not?” 
said I. 

“ Ah, yes, madame ! I did not know my 
mother had told you.” 


236 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


No more did she, indeed ; and she looked 
astonished. But I persevered : — 

“ You seem strong and well.” 

“ Ah, yes, madarae ! ” 

“ How long since you returned ? ” 

“ As soon as there was peace, madame. We 
were mustered out in June, madame.” 

“ And does your arm never trouble you ? ” 

“ Oh, never, madame ! I did not know my 
mother had told you.” 

New astonishment on the part of the mother. 

“ You never had another piece of bone come 
out ? ” 

“ Oh, no, madame ! how did madame know ? 
I did not know my mother had told you ! ” 

And by this time I could not help saying: 
“ You Normans care more for Christmas than 
we Americans ; is it not so, my brave ? ” 

And this he would not stand ; and he said 
stoutly, “ Ah, no, madame ! no, no, — jamais ! ” 
and began an eager defence of the religious 
enthusiasm of the Americans, and their good- 
ness to all people who were good, if people 
would only be good. But still he had not the 
least dream who I was. And I said : — 


STAND AND WAIT. 


237 


“ Do the Normans ever drink Burgundy ? ” 
and to my old hostess: “Madame, could you 
bring us a flask du vin rouge de Bourgogne ? ” 
and then I hummed his little chanson^ — I am 
sure Colonel Barthew will remember it, — 
“ Deux — gouttes — du vin rouge de Bourgogne."*^ 
My dear Mrs. Barthew, he sprang from his 
chair and fell on his knees, and kissed my 
hands, before I could stop him. And when his 
mother and father, and all the rest, found that 
I was the particular soeur de la cJiarite who had 
had the care of dear Louis when he was hurt, 
and that it was I he had told of that very day, 
— for the thousandth time, I believe, — who 
gave him that glass of claret, and cheered up 
his Christmas, I verily believe they would have 
taken me to the church to worship me. They 
were not satisfied, the women with kissing 
me, or the men with shaking hands with each 
other; the whole auherge had to be called in, 
and poor I was famous. I need not say I cried 
my eyes out ; and when, at ten o’clock, they 
let me go to bed, I was worn out with crying, 
and laughing, and talking, and listening; and 
I believe they were as much upset as I. 


238 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


Now that is just the beginning ; and yet I see 
I must stop. But, for forty-eight hours I have 
been simply a queen. I can hardly put my foot 
to the ground. Christmas morning, these dear 
Thibault people came again ; and then the cure 
came ; and then some nice Madame Perrons 
came, and I went to mass with them ; and, 
after mass, their brother’s carriage came, and 
they would take no refusals; but with many 
apologies to my sweet old hostess, at the Three 
Cygnets, I was fain to come up to M. Firmin’s 
lovely chateau here, and make mj^self at home 
till my friends shall arrive. It seems the poor 
Thibaults had come here to beg the flowers for 
the 4trenne. It is really the most beautiful 
country residence I have seen in France ; and 
they live on the most patriarchal footing with 
all the people round them. I am sure I ought 
to speak kindly of them. It is the most fasci- 
nating hospitality. So here am I, waiting, with 
my little %ac de nuit to make me aspettahile ; 
and here I ate my Christmas dinner. Tell 
the Colonel that here is “ The Traveller’s 
Tale ; ” and that is why the letter is so long. 

Most truly yours, 

Huldah Root. 


CHAPTER IV. 


ONE CHRISTMAS MORE. 

HIS last Christmas party is Huldah’s own. 



It is hers, at least, as much as it is any 
one’s. There are five of them, nay six, with 
equal right to precedence in the John o’ Groat’s 
house, where she has settled down. It is one 
of those comfortable houses which are still left 
three miles out from the old State House in 
Boston. It is not all on one floor ; that would 
be, perhaps, too like the golden courts of 
heaven. There are two stories; but they are 
connected by a central flight of stairs of easy 
tread (designed by Charles Cummings) ; so 
easy, and so stately withal, that, as you pass 
over them, you always bless the builder, and 
hardly know that you go up or down. Five 
large rooms on each floor give ample room for 
the five heads of the house, if, indeed, there be 
not six, as I said before. 

In this Saints’ Rest there have drifted to- 
gether, by the eternal law of attraction, Hul- 


240 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


ciah, and Ellen Philbrick (who was with her in 
Virginia and in France, and has been, indeed, 
but little separated from her, except on duty, 
for twenty years), and with them three other 
friends. These women, — well I cannot intro- 
duce them to you without writing three stories 
of true romance, one for each. This quiet, 
strong, meditative, helpful saint, who is coming 
into the parlor now, is Helen Touro. She 
was left alone with her baby when the Empire 
State went down, and her husband was never 
heard of more. The love of that baby warmed 
her to the love of all others ; and, when I first 
knew her, she was ruling over a home of babies, 
whose own mothers or fathers were not, always 
with a heart big enough to say there was room 
for one more waif in that sanctuary. That 
older woman, who is writing at the Davenport 
in the corner, lightened the cares and smoothed 
the daily life of General Schuyler in all the last 
years of his life, when he was in the Cabinet, 
in Brazil, and in Louisiana. His wife was long 
ill, and then died. His children needed all a 
woman’s care ; and this woman stepped to the 
front, cared for them, cared for all his house- 


STAND AND WAIT. 


241 


hold, cared for him ; and I dare not say how 
much is due to her of that which you and I say 
daily we owe to him. Miss Peters, I see you 
know. She served in another regiment; was 
at the head of the sweetest, noblest, purest 
school that ever trained, in five-and-twenty 
years, five hundred girls to be the queens in 
five hundred happy and strong families. All 
of these five, — our Huldah, and Mrs. Philbrick 
too, you have seen before, — all of them have 
been in “ the service ; ” all of them have known 
that perfect service is perfect freedom. I think 
they know that perfect service is the highest 
honor. They have together taken this house, 
as they say, for the shelter and home of their 
old age. But Huldah, as she plays with your 
Harry there, does not look to me as if she were 
superannuated yet. 

“But you said there were six in all.” 

“Did I? I suppose there are. Mr. Phil- 
brick, are there five captains in your establish- 
ment, or six ? ” 

“ My dear Mr. Hale, why do you ask me ? 
You know there are five captains and one 
general. We have persuaded Seth Corbet to 
16 


242 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


make his home here, — yes, the same who went 
round the world with Mrs. Cradock. Since her 
death, he has come home to Boston ; and he 
reports to us, and makes his headquarters here. 
He sees that we are all right every morning ; 
and then he goes his rounds to see every grand- 
child of old Mr. Cradock, and to make sure 
that every son and daughter of that house is 
‘ all right.’ Sometimes he is away over night. 
This is when somebody in the circle of their 
friends is more sick than usual, and needs a 
man nurse. That old man was employed by 
old Mr. Cradock, in 1816, when he first went 
to housekeeping. He has had all the sons and 
all the daughters of that house in his arms ; 
and now that the youngest of them is five-and- 
twenty, and the oldest fifty, I suppose he is not 
satisfied any day until he has seen that they 
and theirs, in their respective homes, are well. 
He thinks we here are babies ; but he takes 
care of us all the more courteously.” 

“ Will he dine with you to-day ? ” 

“ I am afraid not ; but we shall see him at 
the Christmas-tree after dinner. There is to be 
a tree.” 


STAND AND WAIT. 


243 


You see, this house was dedicated to the 
Apotheosis of Noble Ministry. Over the man- 
tel-piece hung Raphael Morghen’s large print 
of “ The Lavatio,” Caracci’s picture of the 
“ Washing of the Feet,” — the only copy I ever 
saw. We asked Huldah about it. 

“ Oh, that was a present from Mr. Burch- 
stadt, a rich manufacturer in Wirtemberg, to 
Ellen ! She stumbled into one of those villages 
when everybody was sick and dying of typhus, 
and tended and watched and saved, one whole 
summer long, as Mrs. Ware did at Osmotherly. 
And this Mr. Burchstadt wanted to do some- 
thing ; and he sent her this in acknowl- 
edgment. 

On the other side was Kaulbach’s own study 
of Elizabeth of Hungary, dropping her apron 
full of roses. 

“ Oh ! what a sight the apron discloses ; 

The viands are changed to real roses ! ” 

When I asked Huldah where that came from, 
she blushed, and said, “ Oh, that was a present 
to me ! ” and led us to Steinler’s exquisite 
“ Good Shepherd,” in a larger and finer print 
than I had ever seen. Six or eight gentlemen 


244 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


ill New York, who, when they were dirty babies 
from the gutter, had been in Helen Touro’s 
hands, had sent her a portfolio of beautiful 
prints, each with this same idea, of seeking 
what was lost. This one she had chosen for 
the sitting-room. 

And on the fourth side was that dashing 
group of Horace Vernet’s, “ Gideon crossing 
Jordan,” with the motto wrought into the 
frame, “ Faint, yet pursuing.” These four pic- 
tures are all presents to the “girls,” as I find 
I still call them ; and on the easel. Miss Peters 
had put her copy of “ The Tribute Money.” 
There were other pictures in the room ; but 
these five unconsciously told its story. 

The five girls were always together at Christ- 
mas ; but, in practice, each of them lived here 
only two fifths of her time. “We make that 
a rule,” said Ellen, laughing. “ If anybody 
comes for anybody when there are only two 
here, those two are engaged to each other ; 
and we stay. Not but what they can come 
and stay here if we cannot go to them.” In 
})ractice, if any of us, in the immense circles 
which these saints had befriended, were in a 


STAND AND WAIT. 


245 


scrape, — as, if a mother was called away from 
home, and there were some children left, or if 
scarlet fever got into a house, or if the chil- 
dren had nobody to go to Mount Desert with 
them, or if the new house were to be set in 
order, and nobody knew how, — in any of the 
trials of well-ordered families, why, we rode 
over to the Saints’ Rest to see if we could 
not induce one of the five to come and put 
things through. So that in practice, there were 
seldom more than two on the spot there. 

But we do not get to the Christmas dinner. 
There were covers for four-and-twenty ; and all 
the children besides were in a room up-stairs, 
presided over by Maria M unroe, who was in 
her element there. Then our party of twenty- 
four included men and women of a thousand 
romances, who had learned and had shown the 
nobility of service. One or two of us were 
invited as’ novices, in the hope, perhaps, that 
we might learn. 

Scarcely was the soup served when the door- 
bell rang. Nothing else ever made Huldah 
look nervous. Bartlett, who was there, said, in 
an aside to me, that he had seen her more calm 


246 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


when there was a volley firing within hearing 
of her store-room. Then it rang again. Helen 
Touro talked more vehemently ; and Mrs. Bart- 
lett at her end started a great laugh. But 
when it rang the third time something had to 
be said ; and Huldah asked one of the girls, 
who was waiting, if there were no one attend- 
ing at the door. 

“ Yes ’m, Mr. Corbet.” 

But the bell rang a fourth time, and a fifth. 

“ Isabel, you can go to the door. Mr. Corbet 
must have stepped out.” 

So Isabel went out, but returned with a face 
as broad as a soup-plate. “ Mr. Corbet is 
there, ma’am.” 

Sixth door-bell peal, — seventh, and eighth. 

“ Mary, I think you had better see if Mr. 
Corbet has gone away. ” 

Mary returns, face one broad grin. 

“ No, ma’am, Mr. Corbet is there. ” 

Heavy steps in the red parlor. Side door- 
bell, a little gong, begins to ring. Front bell 
rings ninth time, tenth, and eleventh. 

Saint John, as we call him, had seen that 
something was amiss, and had kindly pitched 


STAND AND WAIT. 


247 


in with a dissertation on the passage of the Red- 
River Dam, in which the gravy-boats were 
steamships, and the cranberry was General 
Banks, and the spoons were aids. But, when 
both door-bells rang together, and there were 
more steps in the hall, Huldah said, “ If you 
will excuse me,” and rose from the table. 

“ No, no, we will not excuse you,” cried 
Clara Hastings. “ Nobody will excuse you. 
This is the one day of the year when you are 
not to work. Let me go.” So Clara went out. 
And after Clara went out, the door-bells rang 
no more. I think there were still steps in the 
hall. She came back, and said a man was in- 
quiring his way to the “ Smells ; ” and they di- 
rected him to “ Wait’s Mills,” which she hoped 
would do. And so Huldah’s and Grace’s stu- 
pendous housekeeping went on in its solid or- 
der, reminding one of those well-proportioned 
Worcester teas, which are, perhaps, the crown 
and glory of the New-Englaud science in this 
matter. I ventured to ask Sara Root, who sat 
by me, if the Marlborough tarts were not equal 
to his mother’s. 

And we sat long; and we laughed loud. We 


248 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 

talked war, and poetry, and genealogy. We 
rallied Helen Touro about her housekeeping ; 
and Dr. Worcester pretended to give a list of 
surgeons and majors and major-generals who 
had made love to Huldah. By-and-by, when 
the grapes and the bonbons came, the sixteen 
children were led in by Maria Munroe, who 
had, till now, kept them at games of string and 
hunt the slipper. And, at last, Seth Corbet 
flung open the door into the red parlor, to an- 
nounce The Tree.” 

Sure enough, there was the tree, as the five 
saints had prepared it for the invited chil- 
dren, — glorious in gold, and white with wreaths 
of snowflakes, and blazing with candles. Sam 
Root kissed Grace, and said, “ O Grace ! do you 
remember? ” But the tree itself did not surprise 
the children as much as the five tables at the 
right and the left, behind and before, amazed 
the Sainted Five, who were indeed the children 
now. A box of the vin rouge de Bourgogne^ 
from Louis, was the first thing my eye lighted 
on, and above it a little banner read : * ‘ Huldah’s 
table. ” And then I saw that these five tables 
were heaped with the Christmas offerings to the 


STAND AND WAIT. 


249 


five saints. It proved that everybody, the 
world over, had heard that they had settled 
down. Everybody in the four hemispheres, 
if there be four, who had remembered the un- 
selfish service of these five, had thought this a 
fit time for commemorating such unselfish love, 
were it only by such a present as a lump of coal. 
Almost everybody, I think, had made Seth Cor- 
bet a confidant ; and so, while the five saints 
were planning their pretty tree for the sixteen 
children, the North and the South, and the East 
and the West, were sending myrrh and frank- 
incense and gold to them. The pictures were 
hung with Southern pine from Barthew. Boys, 
who were now men, had sent coral from India, 
pearl from Ceylon ; and would have been glad to 
send ice from Greenland, had Christmas come 
in midsummer. There were diamonds from 
Brazil, and silver from Nevada, from those who 
lived there ; there were books, in the choicest 
binding, in memory of copies of the same word, 
worn by travel, or dabbled in blood ; there 
were pictures, either by the hand of near friend- 
ship, or by the master-hand of genius, which 
brought back the memories, perhaps, of some 


250 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


old adventure in “ The Service,” — perhaps, as 
the Kaulbach did, of one of those histories 
which makes all service sacred. In five-and- 
twenty years of life, these women had so sur- 
rounded themselves, without knowing it or 
thinking of it, with loyal, yes, adoring friends, 
that the accident of their finding a fixed home 
had called in all at once this wealth of acknowl- 
edgment from those whom they might have for- 
gotten, but who would never, forget them. 
And, by the accident of our coming together, 
we saw, in these heaps on heaps of offerings of 
love, some faint record of the lives they had en- 
livened, the wounds they had stanched, the 
tears they had wiped away, and the homes they 
had cheered. For themselves, the five saints, 
as I have called them, were laughing and cry- 
ing together, quite upset in the surprise. For 
ourselves, there was not one of us who, in this 
little visible display of the range of years of 
service, did not take in something more of the 
meaning of, — 

“ He who will be chief among you, let him be 
your servant. ” 

The surprise, the excitement, the laughter, 


STAND AND WAIT. 


251 


and the tears found vent in the children’s eager- 
ness to be led to their tree ; and, in three min- 
utes Ellen was opening boxes, and Huldah pull- 
ing fire-crackers, as if they had not been thrown 
off their balance. But when each boy and girl 
had two arras full, and the fir-balsam sent down 
from New Durham was nearly bare, Edgar 
Bartlett pointed to the top bough, where was a 
brilliant not noticed before. No one had no- 
ticed it, — not Seth himself, who had most of 
the other secrets of that house in his possession. 
I am sure that no man, woman, or child knew 
how the thing came there ; but Seth lifted the 
little discoverer high in air, and he brought it 
down triumphant. It was a parcel made up in 
shining silvered paper. Seth cut the strings. 

It contained twelve Maltese crosses of gold, 
with as many jewels, one in the heart of each, — 
I think, the blazing twelve of the Revelations. 
They were displayed on ribbons of blue and 
white, six of which bore Huldah’s, Helen’s, El- 
len Philbrick’s, Hannah’s, Miss Peters’s, and 
Seth Corbet’s names. The other six had no 
names ; but on the gold of these was marked : 
“ From Huldah, to ” “ From Helen, to 


252 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


” and so on, as if these were decorations 

which they were to pass along. The saints 
themselves were the last to understand the deco- 
rations ; but the rest of us caught the idea, and 
pinned them on their breasts. As we did so 
the ribbons unfolded, and displayed the motto of 
the order : — 

“ Henceforth I call you not servants ; I have 
called you friends.” 

It was at that Christmas that the Order of 
Loving Service was born. 


I NEVER supposed that the fancy of Club or- 
ganization, as conceived in the story, would be 
practically carried out. But Miss Ella Russell 
of New York at once read the story to some 
boys in a mission school, and formed from them 
the Club of 

Harry Wadsworth Helpers. 

It is, so far as I know, the first of the long series 
of Wadsworth Clubs. Of this club Miss Russell 
gives this history : The boys, from thirteen to 


HARRY WADSWORTH HELPERS. 


253 


sixteen years old, felt that they were too old to 
go to any mission school ; but the idea of a club 
to meet Sunday afternoons, officered by them- 
selves, seemed a more grown-up affair. I had 
read them the story of Harry Wadsworth, with 
which they were delighted ; and, as the class 
was ten in number, tliey decided to call them- 
selves The Harry Wadsworth Helpers, to 
adopt the four mottoes, and to see what they 
could do to ‘ lend a hand.’ They w’ere to meet 
each week at the Sunday-school rooms, joining 
first with the school in the general exercises, 
then having their own order of proceedings. 
They had an initiation-fee, of ten cents, I be- 
lieve, and monthly dues, besides fines, &c. The 
secretary kept a large book, and each member 
pledged himself to do some special thing each 
week ‘ to help some one;’ and on Sundays all 
these were given and recorded in the book. 
Two of the boys devoted themselves to pick- 
ing up drunken men in the street, finding out 
where they lived, and taking them home. 
Some read to a hopelessly deformed boy who 
could not sit up, and so on. Every two 
months the money collected was spent by 


254 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


the boys themselves in relieving some case of 
special distress. 

“The boys now are men, and, though widely 
scattered, are nearly all doing well. Only yes- 
terday I received a letter from one who has 
been for several years in the Black Hills.” 

In one of the old numbers of the “ From Year 
to Year ” I heard of similar organizations. 

In the beginning of 1871, I had the list of 
some fifty persons, in different parts of the 
world, who called themselves, more or less defi- 
nitely, Harry Wadsworth People. Every two or 
three months perhaps, from that time, for several 
years, I would get a letter from one or another 
of them, perhaps asking advice for the formation 
of a club, perhaps sending me an anecdote of 
some act of heroism or help. In answer to 
questions about the forming of clubs, I have 
always said that “the less fuss and feathers” 
the better; that all the idea I had of a Wads- 
worth Club was, that it should be made of 
unselfish people, — who met, not for “ mutual 
improvement,” but with some definite plan for 
the other people. 

I know not why, — but this book, “Ten Times 


HARRY WADSWORTH HELPERS. 


255 


One is Ten,” very soon had an entree into pris- 
ons. I have, I suppose, a dozen letters, from 
different sources, telling me of the pleasure pris- 
oners have taken in it. One of the clubs is one 
of young ladies, who have circulated it in large 
numbers, in prisons. Until last summer I should 
have said that this was as important a club in 
size as any. 

I think the Ten Times One Club, of West- 
field, Massachusetts, was the largest of these 
organizations ; is it so still ? In 1874 Miss Mary 
A. Lathbury, without having then seen the 
book which the reader has in his hands, pro- 
posed the establishment of the Look-Up Legion, 
with the four mottoes, which she had seen on 
the frieze of a friend’s parlor in Orange. This 
Legion extends through five hundred or more 
Sunday-schools. Their object is expressed in 
this general order: — 

LOOK-UP LEGION. 

The Look-Up Legion is a society carried on 
through the Bay Window Department of “The 
Sunday-School Advocate,” and having a member- 
ship of over three thousand boys and girls. Its 
object is to aid in building up true character, and 


256 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


in scattering the light of unselfish lives. Its mem- 
bers pledge themselves to be “ truthful, unselfish, 
cheerful, hopeful, and helpful.” They adopt the 
famous Wadsworth mottoes, found in “ Ten Times 
One is Ten,” by Rev. E. E. Hale: — 

“ Look up and not down ; 

Look out and not in ; 

Look forward and not back, 
and Lend a hand.” 

Persons may become members of this society by 
sending their names to “The Sunday-School Advo- 
cate ; ” this proves their willingness to subscribe to 
the pledge. 

Local chapters or clubs have been formed in 
many places, and it is hoped that this will be done 
wherever practicable. Weekly or semi-monthly 
meetings are recommended, and some line of work, 
adapted to the locality, may be carried on through 
these meetings. 

Reports from all such clubs will be welcomed at 
the office of “ The Sunday-School Advocate.” A 
beautiful badge of nickel plate, in the form of a 
Maltese cross, bearing the four mottoes, will be 
sent on receipt of fifteen cents. Pledge-cards at 
three cents each. 

Martha Van Marter. 

Miss Van Marter is the corresponding secre- 
tary of the first division of the Legion ; her 
address is Orange, New Jersey. 


WELCOME AND CORRESPONDENCE CLUBS. 257 


In the summer of 1881 I met the first divi- 
sion of the Legion at its anniversary meeting. 
Then was established the system of circular 
correspondence — which has been kept up ever 
since. Any person or club who wishes to enter 
into this correspondence must send fifty cents 
subscription to the 

Welcome and Correspondence Club, 

39 Highland Street, Roxhury, Mass, 

To such club or person will be sent the 
Monthly Circular, containing letters from the 
several organizations. From the Circular of 
the first year I copy here a few of these 
reports. 


FLOWER AND FRUIT MISSION. 

The work of our Flower Mission differs some- 
what from that in larger cities ; for we visit the 
invalids in their homes, more than in hospitals 
and other charitable institutions ; and, not having 
so many, we can devote more time to each, and 
become better acquainted with them. The young 
ladies who do not dare to undertake work of greater 
responsibility succeed admirably in this charity ; 

17 


258 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


and it has always seemed to me, that, however re- 
freshing these visits are to the aged and sick, the 
visitors themselves derive the greater benefit from 
them in the lessons of patience and cheerfulness 
which are often so forcibly impressed upon them. 
Our Fruit and Flower Mission was started more 
than twelve years ago, in connection with our Un- 
ion for Good Works, and is still going on quietly 
and successfully ; and others have been formed 
since in different churches. The names of the per- 
sons we were to visit were given to us by the Re- 
lief Committee of the Union, whom we consulted 
when new ones were suggested, and to whom we 
gave a monthly report of our work. I think it is 
still carried on in the same way; but, as I was 
obliged to give up my part of the work some time 
ago, I am not quite sure. We had a committee of 
sixteen young ladies, eight of whom visited each 
week, two usually going together. One from each 
committee of eight was appointed to give to each 
the names of those she should visit, keep the ac- 
counts, and divide the small sum of money with 
which we bought fruit and delicacies when they 
were not contributed. Each one made about six 
visits, which was all we could do while the flowers 
were fresh in the hot weather ; and each sent her re- 
port to our secretary, to be copied into the book to 
which we always referred before making our next 
visit. We became so interested in our patients 
that we could not give them up when the flower 
contributions ceased, and have always kept up our 


PIONEER LEGION WORK. 


259 


visiting through the winter, taking fruit and little 
delicacies, but avoiding all almsgiving. 

Many of us have formed life-long friendships, for 
which we shall always be grateful to the Flower 
Mission. 


PIONEER LEGION WORK. 


It affords me pleasure to become a correspondent 
of, and a subscriber to, your circulars on behalf of 
the Look-Up Legion of this place. We live in a 
lumbering district, and our advantages are few com- 
pared with our city sisters. Yet we enjoy other 
benefits which they cannot. We have a grand pan- 
orama of evergreen-clad mountains, valleys rapidly 
being reclaimed from their wild state, and the lim- 
pid streams reflecting the beauties from their crystal 
depths. Pure air and pure water render living a 
delight; and what more natural in such surround- 
ings than that morality should gain many friends ? 
The spirit of charity, which has never allowed a 
poor-tax to be levied in this township, finally took 
definite shape in the form of a band consisting of 
twenty young ladies, from fifteen to twenty-one 
years old, who, being rather prejudiced against 
the word Club, took the name and pledge of the 
“Look-Up Legion.” Since the 1st of October last 
they have met once a week in the afternoon, and 


260 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 


sewed. They made a number of useful articles, such 
as aprons, children’s dresses, bags for school-books, 
dressed dolls, &c. Then the week before Christmas 
they held a fair and festival, the net profits being $50. 
With this sum and other donations, they purchased a 
library of carefully selected books. The Look-Up 
Legion are members, and any one else can become 
a member by paying one dollar, and quarterly fees 
of twenty-five cents. Latterly the Legion has not 
been meeting, on account of its members being 
mostly in school, and their leisure time is limited. 
They secured the services of an eminent minister to 
lecture on London, which great city he had re- 
cently visited. Other lectures are in reserve; so 
that the little band is a leaven that will very soon, 
God prospering them, leaven the whole lump of 
surrounding society. They are ready for any good 
work that calls them, and will be glad to read of 
the doings of other organizations, which may help 
to decide their future course. 

, N. N. 

-to*- 

A GIRLS’ i.LAlOL. — HOW ABOUT BOYS? 


The club of which I am chief (if that be my 
position) calls itself the Lend-a-Hand Club. It 
numbers between forty and fifty members, all girls. 
Some boys wish to join, but I have not yet seen 
clearly the best way to receive them. I will ask 
the Correspondence Club what I shall do with the 


A GIRLS' LEGION. 


261 


boys, under the circumstances, after being freely 
told what the girls do. Our club meets at my house 
once in two weeks, Monday, at4^ o’clock, p.m., so 
as not to interfere with school ; and continues in 
session one hour, so as to get home before dark. 
We sew or work on anything we have to do the 
first half-hour of our session; and the other half we 
devote to literary exercises, such as reading and 
recitations and music. Short original essays are 
coaxed from the girls ; and we have an exercise we 
call Oddities, which consists of something original 
and funny, arranged by a committee selected the 
week before, and kept a secret from the other mem- 
bers of the club till it is brought out at the meeting. 
Sometimes it takes the form of a tableau, sometimes 
a charade. Always it proves very interesting. As 
for useful work, the girls are of ages from ten to fif- 
teen years, and know less about sewing than their 
grandmothers did at their age, no doubt ; but they 
bring such eager, willing hearts to the task, they 
accomplish a good deal. In November we sent a 
large box of clothing, and articles suitable for 
Christmas presents, to a missionary in Utah. 

The girls hold themselves in readiness to do any 
kindly deed they may be asked to do. Sometimes, 
when a beggar calls at my door, I send two or three 
of the girls to find out about the family. If they 
live in our town, and if they are found needy, we 
attend to their wants as far as possible. 

We have been organized only a year, and had a 
long vacation of four months in the summer, and 


262 HARRY WADSWORTH AND WADSWORTH CLUBS. 




are having another this winter, while the days are 
short, so that our work has been interrupted. We 
have bed-quilts and tidies and rugs commenced, 
which we hope to see finished. Dressing dolls for 
hospital children would be rather our delight, if we 
knew just the best way to dispose of them. Our 
city is rather too small for our benevolence. We 
have a constitution and by-laws, a president, 
vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. We have 
a membership-fee of ten cents, payable yearly, and a 
contribution of a penny each at every meeting. 



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